Covid Legacies: Long-term Social and Cultural Effects Conference
Photography Contest
The COVID-19 pandemic reshaped our relationships with many aspects of daily life. Concepts such as labor, care, and intimate life took different meanings and forms. Our ways of seeing were no exception to that change: windows became frames, screens became meeting places, and the ordinary surfaces of daily life took on new weight. As part of the “Covid Legacies: Long-term Social and Cultural Effects” conference, we invite Sabancı University VAVCD and Koç University MAVA students to contribute to a visual record of what the pandemic changed and what it left behind.
We welcome images that engage the pandemic as a social and cultural turning point rather than a purely medical event. Submissions might respond to questions such as:
* How did the body become at once a site of danger and of care?
* How did closed physical borders and open digital ones reshape intimacy, distance, and community?
* What did isolation, loss, waiting, or resilience look like from where you stood?
* What traces of the pandemic still linger in the spaces we move through today?
Rules & Eligibility
Contest Guidelines
Each entrant may submit up to 2 photographs.
Files should be high-resolution JPEG or TIFF, suitable for printing at 300 dpi. Please submit the largest, highest-quality version available (ideally a long edge of at least 3500 px).
Work must be your own, and you must hold the rights to any recognisable people or private spaces depicted.
Eligibility Criteria
Open to the Sabancı University VAVCD and Koç University MAVA students only!
Submissions and questions to: covidlegacies@gmail.com, subject line "Photography Contest."
Deadline: September 15.
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Award Information
A multidisciplinary panel of experts in visual media and culture will evaluate all entries. Beyond the primary prizes, chosen photographs will be featured in a special exhibition at Minerva Palas during the event, ensuring visibility for the artists. Participants retain their copyrights while granting the conference rights for exhibition and non-commercial promotion related to the program.
Awards
1st Prize: Pandora Bookstore gift card of 15000 TL
2nd Prize: Pandora Bookstore gift card of 10000 TL
3rd Prize: Pandora Bookstore gift card of 5000 TL
2 Honorable Mentions prize for the entrants, whose photographs will also be exhibited at Minerva Palas during the conference.
Jury Panel
Laleper Aytek (Koç University)
Jasmine Erdener (Koç University)
Suncem Koçer (Koç University)
Kerem Ozan Bayraktar (Sabancı University)
Murat Durusoy (Sabancı University)
Sedef Uluğ (Sabancı University)