The FotoDoc Photo Contest 2025 finalists have been announced. Closing on July 13, the competition received 3,597 submissions from photographers residing in all 27 Brazilian states and internationally.
This edition marks a significant increase in international participation, with entries from 31 countries:
South Africa, Germany, Angola, Argentina, Benin, Chile, China, Colombia, Cuba, Egypt, Spain, United States, Finland, France, Ghana, Greece, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Morocco, Mexico, Netherlands, Panama, Portugal, United Kingdom, Sweden, Switzerland, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
A total of 1,312 entries were selected and published:
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661 Single Images
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441 Photo Essays
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210 Portfolios
After reevaluating all published entries per the Official Rules, 60 finalists were chosen:
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9 Portfolios
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21 Photo Essays
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30 Single Images
A 5-member Jury will convene in person in São Paulo to select:
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25 Category Winners
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1 Grand Prize Portfolio Winner
The Grand Prize recipient will be invited to participate in the festival and receive a custom-designed trophy.
The Winners’ Exhibition will be a highlight of the FotoDoc Festival (November 4-8, 2025) at Panamericana School of Art and Design in São Paulo, with displays open until January 10, 2026.
Explore finalists by category:
PORTFOLIOS
When the Earth Sings – Memories of Ritual and Healing
In the Umbanda Omoloko Ilé Ifé Oxum Apará terreiro, every leaf harvested, every chant intoned, every body...
Read moreDetailsWoven Fates
Woven Fates is an ongoing multimedia documentary project exploring the devastating impact of textile waste...
Read moreDetailsWizards and Healers: BANTU Magic Across Africa, Cuba, and Maranhão
Unraveling the African diaspora reveals Latin America as the undisputed epicenter of the extraordinary. This...
Read moreDetailsViolent Removal
It feels comfortable for me to propose "Violent Removal"—simply because I don’t live it. Even...
Read moreDetailsThe Great Guardians
This photographic essay emerged from my desire to document and honor ancient cultures rapidly transforming...
Read moreDetailsI Thought the Sea Always Smelled the Same
For him, then just a student, the Fukushima nuclear accident was something that happened beyond...
Read moreDetailsPresságio – Fauna and Flora Are Sacred
Presságio (Omen) is a sign, a vision of the future, a premonition, a portent. Born where...
Read moreDetailsCarry Your Burden
This series presents an array of people engaging in laborious activities or resting after toiling...
Read moreDetailsintimate metamorphosis
Through a window, in the crack of a door, within a mirror, I immerse myself...
Read moreDetailsPHOTO ESSAYS
City in Ashes
From the felling of surviving urban trees to the burning of trunks, this film confronts...
Read moreDetailsDevotion
Whether you believe in God or not, we cannot ignore that millions on this planet...
Read moreDetailsThe Gaze of Farewell
Between November 2022 and September 2023, Azerbaijan and Turkey imposed a total siege on the...
Read moreDetailsWhich Story We Tell
This work began in the early 2000s during a high school field trip to Redenção—Ceará’s...
Read moreDetailsTo the Beings of Metamorphosis
"Exu killed a bird yesterday with a stone thrown only today." Exu—being of the crossroads,...
Read moreDetailsDepth Soundings
My self-portraits mirror how I feel the world I see and experience. I dive into my...
Read moreDetailsAfter the Rain
After the Rain is an essay capturing the deep scars left—not just on urban landscapes but...
Read moreDetailsPostcard
This series employs Rio de Janeiro’s classic symbols—Christ the Redeemer, Sugarloaf Mountain, Copacabana’s shoreline—to challenge the...
Read moreDetailsNhanderekó: The Essence of Indigenous Resistance
Since 2022, I have documented the ATL – Articulation of Indigenous Peoples, an annual event in...
Read moreDetailsStudies on Delirium
In her creative process, Lais Mazzucco constructs delirious inventions, drawing from psychoanalysis to frame delirium as...
Read moreDetailsThe Nest
This photographic essay is an intimate, poetic, and harsh story about the experience that many...
Read moreDetailsWhen Flowers Bloom
In this series I bring color back into my black and white photographs through hand...
Read moreDetailsAmong Reflections: The Secrets We Conceal
Floods are not merely meteorological phenomena—they are structural fissures. This essay emerges from the recurrent inundations...
Read moreDetailsJourney Along the Rio Negro
The Rio Negro rises in Colombia and flows into Brazil, where it converges with the...
Read moreDetailsSymbiosis
This essay is a self-portrait capturing an emotionally difficult period of my life. Clay of...
Read moreDetailsIdentity
This photographic project probes the relationship between appearance and identity, capturing individuals who transform personal style...
Read moreDetailsWish it Was a Coming Out
I am lesbian and I did not succeed in talking to my grandparents about me,...
Read moreDetailsKalunga Empire
Every year during one week in August, Vão das Almas—in rural Cavalcante, northern Goiás—transforms into a...
Read moreDetailsECO EGUM
“…no people who endured all this as daily life across centuries would emerge unmarked…” —From The...
Read moreDetailsLa Petite Mort
I have lived many lives, existing among scars, joys, and sorrows. I transit between: the...
Read moreDetailsSanctuaria
‘Sanctuaria’ is a photo essay that explores life in animal sanctuaries and secure spaces for...
Read moreDetailsSINGLE IMAGES
Jaguar Soul
A magnificent predator, perfectly adapted, met my gaze with primal intensity. Our eyes locked: a...
Read moreDetails
Sebastian
Sebastian, an indigenous leader from the Shuar community in the Amazonian jungle of Ecuador, poses...
Read moreDetailsUnerased Reflection
This photo captures backstage at the DragStar finals, Theatro Rival, Rio de Janeiro, May 2025....
Read moreDetailsGravity Suspended
As feet leave concrete, time bends. The skateboarder hovers—defying urban rigidity with street-born alchemy. Years...
Read moreDetailsHuman Body
Cancer for this woman was: to see her hair fall in pieces, loose weight, chemios,...
Read moreDetailsLicense to Kill
An experimental narrative of Rio's social body—where Black lives are lyrical debris. Police killings trivialized...
Read moreDetails
The Junk Room
"The favela is the junk room," whispers the mural. Before Carolina Maria de Jesus’ painted...
Read moreDetailsAffection and Resistance on the Esplanade
Indigenous women walk hand in hand toward Brazil's National Congress during the 2025 ATL March....
Read moreDetailsBrazil Nut Gatherer
The gaze of Amazon forest-dwellers. Rio Cajari Extractive Reserve, Amapá.
Read moreDetailsAncestral Future
Congada dancers converge at the Popular Festival of Saint Benedict, Aparecida SP .
Read moreDetailsNo Limits
"Strength is moving forward when it hurts." On the cruelest incline, muscles screaming, he climbed....
Read moreDetailsLittle Lord Hanuman
This is joyful moment of a child who was enjoying in Ganga river.
Read moreDetailsPandemic – The Walk Home
A balloon seller trudges home after a day on empty beaches. Covid-19, 2020.
Read moreDetails
Drought in the Sertão
A fish fossilized by thirst. Bahia backlands, by Noilton Pereira.
Read moreDetailsOrganic Rice Farmer
Rice farmer Juarez Felipe Pereira harvests with a sickle at his Barra do Ribeiro farm...
Read moreDetails
Freedom
This image shows a Rajasthani woman in a typical blue painted Haveli, trying to protect...
Read moreDetailsKuikuro
Ipatse village, Upper Xingu, MT (2024). Xingu Indigenous Territory. Childhood: free, present, fierce.
Read moreDetails
Cerrado Ablaze
Fires consumed 3,000+ hectares of Brasília's National Park in 2024. This tapir calf, found by...
Read moreDetailsPose!
Voguing tribute at Brazil's First Transmasculine March, March 2024. Born in 1960s Harlem, popularized in...
Read moreDetails