Research & creation
The 21 September 2026
Call for applications for the 9th Institut's Grant
The City and Its Stories
Building on the theme of the 2025 Grant, Landscape and Its Stories, the Institut pour la photographie turns to the city for its 2027 edition: The City and Its Stories.
Omnipresent in the history of photography, the city is more than a subject to be represented. Shaped by people, history, geography, politics and technology, it also transforms the ways in which the urban is represented and the construction of visual cultures.
As a site of collective or individual experience, spanning an entire lifetime or contained within a single memory, the city opens the image onto intimate and atmospheric worlds, shaped by night and day, the seasons, love, sorrow and struggle… as many variations of lived experiences.
Its visual form expresses a relationship to space, to verticality and horizontality, to proximity and distance, in which the urban environment, with its solid forms and open spaces, networks and fabric, creates a text, a semantics of the city.
The 9th edition of the Institut’s Grant invites us to view the city a photographic subject approached through fiction, including literature and cinema, as well as through study, chronicle and investigation.
Deadline for applications → December 1, 2026, 3:00 p.m. (Paris Time)
Application Guidelines
The call for applications is open to university and independent researchers, exhibition curators, art critics, photographers, and artists who are available throughout the program year. Projects—including publications, exhibitions, and the creation of artworks—must address the theme proposed each year.
Applicants may submit only one application. It must be submitted electronically via the dedicated platform of the Institut.
Applications must include the following documents in a single PDF file only:
↘︎ A detailed project proposal (maximum 8,000 characters / 1,300 words)
↘︎ A tentative timeline for the project’s implementation during the period of the Institute’s grant
↘︎ 5 to 20 images (in A4 format, 72 dpi) related to the project proposed in the application
↘︎ A one-page summary resume containing the following information: current position or ongoing work, education, a selection of exhibitions, publications, presentations, and completed projects
↘︎ A royalty-free photographic portrait of the candidate(s)
↘︎ A letter of recommendation from a recognized professional in the field of art, research, or publishing
The official languages for applications for the Institute’s scholarship are French and English. Applicants must reside in France or a neighboring country, as the program involves frequent travel within France.
The application deadline is December 1, 2026, at 3:00 p.m.