ERRAR — a Portuguese word with multiple meanings — guides this call as both method and attitude. On one hand, errar evokes wandering: an errant practice of photography that moves through territories, from the nineteenth-century figure of the flâneur described by Baudelaire—one who walks without destination, gathering impressions along the way—to the situationist dérive, and into contemporary forms of dispersed movement across digital and networked spaces. In this sense, wandering becomes a mode of assembling experiences, a subjective montage shaped by the contingencies of the path; it is exploratory and provisional: a movement whose destination is constantly shifting.

On the other hand, errar means to err—to misstep, to hesitate, to search through uncertainty. Here error is not failure but a generative condition: a way of circling a question, testing viewpoints, and approaching thought through images. Error can be understood as invention, a deviation from established norms and canons. It is an anti-canonical gesture that opens space for experimentation and performance.

This conference invites photographers and other practitioners working with photographic images to submit visual essays, photobooks, and other photographic sequences that respond to these twin meanings of errar: works that wander, drift, or deviate; works that embrace experimentation, doubt, and the productive potential of the mistake. We welcome submissions that explore photography as a practice of movement—through landscapes, archives, platforms, and ideas—and as a form of thinking that unfolds through approximation rather than resolution.

We welcome submissions presenting Photography, artistic and practice-based research projects that engage with the following themes, although proposals are not limited to these topics:

• Photography, wandering and the exploration of place: drifting through landscapes, and other forms of errant movement through territory;
• The photographic essay as a form of thinking: narrative sequences and montage in photobooks and visual essays;
• Error as method: experimentation, misstep, and productive failure in photographic practice;
• Photography between analogue and digital: movement across devices, surfaces, formats, materials/materialities, archives, and networked spaces;
• Deviations from photographic conventions: iconoclastic, anti-canonical practices and alternative image-making;
• Walking as photographic practice: movement, perception, printing and image-making;

Who can apply:

We welcome submissions from photographers, artists and other practitioners working with photographic images, researchers and students, both from FilmEU Alliance member institutions and other higher education and research institutions.

Presentation format:

We accept proposals for short presentations limited to 20 minutes; and long presentations limited to two hours (minimum 40 minutes).

Short presentations will be organized into panels and are intended for displaying and discussing projects.

Long presentations are intended for sharing sessions involving hands-on practice.

We encourage exploratory approaches from individuals and collectives. Presentations may include visual or audiovisual works, or performative actions, and can be delivered in English or Portuguese.

How to apply:

To submit a proposal, the submitter must be registered as a user of the Research Catalogue (RC) with a full account. This will enable you to access both the Application Form and create an Exposition to display your work. Please make sure to register on the RC as soon as possible to ensure that your registration can be processed in time.

Registering a full RC account is free.

For more information about the RC registration process, you may consult the video tutorial.

Once you have a full account, you can log in and start working on your application by going to your profile page.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

The following details will be required:

• Title (max. 200 characters).
• Abstract for Conference program (max. 2000 characters).
• Short biographies of presenters (max. 600 characters).
• Image for the Conference program.
• Information on the presentation format (max. 1000 characters).
• Spatial and/or technical requirements (max. 500 characters).
• Previous iterations of the research (max. 1000 characters).

RC Exposition: with the application form, we will also ask you to attach an RC Exposition of your project. The attached exposition should be made specifically for this submission purpose, and should not be previously published. As a guideline, the exposition should not demand more than 15 minutes to read/navigate. We recommend making yourself familiar with the RC requirements in advance of the submission deadline. See the quickstart guide for creating your first RC exposition.

N.B. Please do not "submit for review" the exposition to any of the RC portals (JAR, HUB, etc.) or self-publish it. You can attach the exposition to your application using the application form itself. Attaching it to the form will ensure that the reviewers will be able to view and assess the content once your application is made available to them. Tip: you can attach the exposition using the title, not the url/link.

Deadline for submissions: 15 July 2026

Applications will be reviewed by: 31 July 2026