Calls are open for the submission of still and moving images for Cape Town's 5th edition Festival from 27th September – 31 October 2012, celebrating the photographic image as a unique space where the real and the metaphor engage and stimulate exploration, imagination and the expression of new ideas, within a diverse range of areas, from political and personal to aesthetic and conceptual.

A growing platform for communication between local communities, the festival also invites inter-regional and international exchange, circulation and dialogue, supporting the current positioning of South Africa as a world cultural site and hub of photographic vision and practice. 100 activities from exhibitions to master classes and a mini film festival will showcase within the inner and outer city.

September/October 2012 is the period to diarize. The festival, graduating to a Biennial event from 2012, has grown in its 13 years of triennial rhythm, aiming to present a peak of product this year and leading up to 2014, with Cape Town as Design Centre of the World. The past 4 festivals have proved successful and inspiring to all, aiming for and achieving 100 exhibitions and projects played out in each festival, with very positive and encouraging results.

Presented by The South African Centre for Photography, as a program of exhibitions, social events, seminars, workshops and master classes in photography and related themes, the month–long event creates a comprehensive network between diverse photographic communities, including documentary, commercial and fine art practitioners, amateur associations and learners, all of whom are given a forum for expression.

The showcase encourages and welcomes bodies of work proposed by photographers, historians and writers, galleries, museums and photographic entities nationally and globally. This year so far proposals have been accepted for work proposed by curators and image creators from China, Italy, Croatia, Australia, New Zealand and The U.K. The Grand opening, a principal MOP5 event, will take place at 6pm on Thursday 27 September, and preview the showcase at the Festival’s loyal ground venue, the Castle of Good Hope, which will hosts a number of solo and group exhibitions. Other events and exhibitions will open at a leading galleries, event centres and museums around the Cape on different occasions throughout the extended month, already building a memento from mid-September.

The 200 page festival catalogue, which is sent to museums, galleries, libraries and higher centres of learning around the globe after the festival, is also sold in top bookstores after the fact, and accessed for its comprehensive document of an evolving collective vision of our contemporary life. This collector’s item showcases not only the core exhibitions, but also the fringe and satellite items, becoming available with a launch and at the SA Centre before the festival, to guide the visitor and the participator through the intriguing routes, physical and conceptual, on the schedule. The added coverage of the range of activity and production, associated venues and businesses engaged with creators using the photographic context, presents a comprehensive snapshot of the medium in the current times.

MoP5 promotes opportunities for South African image makers to gain both local and global exposure. It will play a pivotal role in giving prominence to photography as a valuable language of expression and cultural resource promoting the sharing of individual and group stories of our world and the networking between these diverse experiences, understandings and expressions. The intention to create the interflow of cultural interest is a view to enter the already huge shift towards dynamic cultural tourism flowing between the online and physical entry of attracted and interested parties to our local worlds.

ONLINE CULTURAL TOURISM is what currently shifts global trends, interests and attitudes patterning through the world, and drawing people physically towards and through the spaces and places that they come across. We are plotting our festival on the global internet highway and attracting interest towards our event on Cape Town’s cultural, historical and economic calendar.

Autobiography: Chronicles of our Times, the theme of MoP5, recognizes and emphasizes the value of subjective expression in the make-up of universal meaning. This 5th edition of the festival celebrates the significance of the facetted nature of world view: the parts that make up the whole, drawing attention to the power of personal interpretation in the creation of the factual historical account, in the construction of communal and mass experience and in the defining of the global parameters of aesthetic, conceptual, philosophical and categorical frameworks within which we live and create.

Contact sacentrphoto@iafrica.com or visit www.photocentre.org.za to download the application forms, theme and participation guidelines.

Issued by Jenny Altsschuler