Who is eligible to participate in the 2025 Joop Swart Masterclass?
- Open for professional photographers with 5-10 years of experience making/and or publishing visual stories in the fields of photojournalism and documentary photography.
- Participants should have an existing project idea that they would like to further develop during the masterclass.
- Participants should have intermediate English skills.
- The masterclass welcomes photographers from all regions of the world. From the 12 participants that will be selected, six will come from the SWANA region. A participant from each global region will be selected to complete the participant selection.
- Participants should be willing to spend 4-8 hours/week during the online mentorship program from June-mid October, including presentations, coursework, readings and project development, and to commit for a full week in-person masterclass in Amsterdam early November 2025.
Selection process
The Joop Swart Masterclass participants are selected by an independent selection committee, based on a nomination process, in three phases:
1. Nomination
- Nominations start on 26 February and end on 17 March 2025.
- Each nominator can propose up to three photographers: one from their region, one from outside their region, and an extra spot from the SWANA region as it is the focus of the program in 2025.
- All nominees will be published on the World Press Photo website on 19 March 2025.
The World Press Photo Foundation cannot connect individuals to nominators on the panel and cannot provide the contact details of nominators. However, nominators sometimes make their search for candidates public on their social media channels, and individuals can also contact nominators independently.
2. Portfolio submission
From 19 March to 13 April, nominees can submit their portfolio for the selection committee to consider.
- The portfolio must include photography but can also include multimedia and video.
- The topic of submissions is open; there are no specific categories.
- The application should include a motivation letter (max. 500 words), a CV, a short bio and a portfolio of 30 pictures, consisting of a maximum of 3 stories/essays with a maximum of 10 photographs.
- Brief story descriptions are mandatory (150-400 words).
- The portfolio should include recent work, made in the last five years. Projects that have started more than five years ago are accepted if half of the pictures are made in the last five years.
3. Selection committee
The selection process will take place over a period of three weeks in April 2025. An independent selection committee made up of five photography professionals representing different areas of expertise will review all the portfolio submissions and select the 12 participants:
- Abdo Shanan, Algeria, documentary photographer
- Stella Nantongo, Uganda, co-director at FOTEA and organiser of the Uganda Press Photo Award
- Sana Ullah, United States/Bangladesh, Senior Program Officer (Storytelling), National Geographic Society
- Daniel Boetker-Smith, Australia, educator, writer, curator, publisher, and photographer
- Luisa Fernanda González, Colombia, photojournalist and photo editor, Reuters
The 2025 masterclass focuses on the Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) region, but welcomes photographers from all regions of the world. Of the 12 participants selected, six come from the SWANA region. A participant from each global region will be selected to complete the participant selection.
The 12 selected participants will be announced in May 2025.
SWANA region
The following countries are considered in the SWANA region: Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen.
