Phodar Series Awards – 14th International Biennial

• Phodar

• Deadline: December 31st, 2026

• Theme: Traces Remain

• Prize: €2,000 + Exhibition in Sofia (Bulgaria)

• Entry Fees: Free

• REGISTRATION: CLICK HERE

The 14th edition of the Fodar International Photo Festival Biennale takes as its central theme “Traces Remain”, a title inspired by the novel of the same name by Bulgarian writer Pavel Vezhinov. The theme invites photographers and audiences to reflect on the lasting imprints left by time, human presence and historical events on both the physical and emotional landscapes of the world. It explores how experiences, encounters, memories and transformations continue to exist through visible and invisible traces, even after their original circumstances have disappeared. Within this framework, photography becomes a means of observing, documenting and interpreting the marks that shape our collective and individual histories.

In her influential book On Photography, Susan Sontag describes the photographic image as a trace of reality, establishing a direct physical connection between the image and the moment that once stood before the camera. A photograph is therefore both evidence of something that existed and a reminder that the moment itself has already passed. Its ability to preserve a fragment of time is inseparable from its awareness of impermanence. Between presence and absence, memory and forgetting, documentation and subjective interpretation, photography creates a complex space in which the past remains accessible but never entirely fixed. Through this tension, images become more than records of events: they transform into carriers of memory, fragments of history and starting points for new interpretations.