Documentary Photography Festival
FotoDoc – International Photography Festival is an event dedicated to fostering the production of documentary photography. It highlights long-term, authorial projects that address pressing contemporary issues, employing a variety of technical and formal approaches.
Documentary photography transcends all genres: street scenes, landscapes, portraits, nature, wildlife, and photojournalism. Its defining feature is a commitment to expressing reality with its social and critical implications, using montage techniques to construct compelling and engaging visual narratives. Through the combination of photographs and texts in diverse formats, it creates immersive storytelling experiences.
FotoDoc was founded in 2022 as a result of a partnership between Vertente Fotografia, the production company of Érico Elias, and Panamericana Escola de Arte e Design.
With a background in Journalism and Photography, as well as a Master’s and Ph.D. in Visual Arts, Érico Elias worked as Communication Coordinator, Curator, and Artistic Director of the Paraty em Foco festival for five editions, from 2015 to 2019. This experience led him to establish his own production company, Vertente, in 2019.
In 2020, Érico Elias created the new website for Fotografe magazine, along with the Fotografe Grand Prize, an annual photography contest that held two editions, in 2021 and 2022. The winners of the Fotografe Grand Prize 2021 were exhibited at the Panamericana Gallery, an initiative whose success fueled the desire to create a festival. Thus, FotoDoc was born, organized by Vertente in partnership with Panamericana.
In its second edition, held in 2023, the festival introduced the FotoDoc Photo Contest, a prize designed to highlight outstanding works and relevant contemporary themes. The winners are featured in a major exhibition as part of the festival’s program.
The third edition, which took place from November 26 to 30, 2024, expanded the number of FotoDoc Photo Contest winners from 17 to 20, increasing the representation of emerging talents. This edition also marked the festival’s internationalization, welcoming Dutch guests Elspeth Diederix and Erik Vroons.
FotoDoc
International Photography Festival
LOCATION:
Panamericana Escola de Arte e Design
Av. Angélica, 1,900 – Higienópolis
São Paulo (SP), Brazil
DATES:
November 4–8, 2025
Opening: November 4 at 6 PM
Closing: November 8 at 4 PM
Exhibitions on display until January 10, 2026
