Acknowledgement of Country

Ballarat International Foto Biennale acknowledges that we are meeting, creating and working on the traditional land of the Wadawurrung and and Dja Dja Wurrung People. We recognise and respect their cultural heritage beliefs and relationship with the land. We pay our respects to the Elders past, present and future.

Enter GradFoto 2025

Image: Lê Nguyên Phương, Vở ô ly, 2024. Winner GradFoto Award 2024.

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The Ballarat International Foto Biennale is thrilled to present GradFoto 2025.

This award celebrates the artistic excellence of graduating students in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. It is open to emerging contemporary artists from selected institutions whose artistic practice includes photography. Following its inaugural launch in 2020, GradFoto continues to showcase the high calibre of photographic work by up and coming graduates to new audiences across Australia and beyond, creating connections for them as they begin their artistic careers.


All applicants will have their submissions reviewed. Up to 20 finalists will be selected and have their work exhibited online in the 2025 GradFoto Exhibition. Judge Daniella Zalcman will award one cash prize of AUD $1000 to the overall winner. Another finalist will be awarded one cash prize of AUD $500 for the People’s Choice Award, as voted by the public throughout the 2025 GradFoto Exhibition.


Key Dates

Applications Open: Now
Applications Close: 23 November 2025, 11.59PM AEDT
Finalists Contacted: 9 December 2025
Online Exhibition and Winner Announced:12 December 2025
People's Choice Winner Announced: 6 February 2026

Judge


Daniella Zalcman



Daniella Zalcman is a Vietnamese-American documentary photographer based in New Orleans, LA. She is a Catchlight Fellow, a multiple grantee of the National Geographic Society and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, a fellow with the International Women's Media Foundation, and the founder of Women Photograph, a nonprofit working to elevate the voices of women and nonbinary visual journalists. Her work tends to focus on the legacies of western colonisation, from the rise of homophobia in East Africa to the forced assimilation education of Indigenous children in North America. Daniella is also currently a Professor of Practice at Tulane University.


Photograph by Taylor Mickal.

Eligibility

The Ballarat International Foto Biennale GradFoto 2025 is open to all tertiary-level graduates from selected institutions aged 18 and over, living in Australia and New Zealand. The submitted series must:

  1. Be a series of photographic works that have been substantially produced by photographic means, including analogue and digital photography, collage and mixed media
  2. Be accompanied by an artistic rationale
  3. Be comprised of 1-20 images
  4. Be a finished project
  5. Have been executed and/or resolved within the graduate year leading up to the deadline for submissions, that is after 1 January 2025

Best of luck to all graduates!

Enter GradFoto 2025

Entry Terms and Conditions