The winners of our Family open call were announced at last (here and here are the two winners in the ‘Series’ category, and here is the winner of the ‘Single Images’ category). Before we wrap up our exciting first call, you deserve to hear the words of thanks and appreciation for the general quality of the submitted works that Francesca Genovese, the founder and director of Francesca Maffeo Gallery and the juror of the call, shares below:

A sincere thank you to all those who submitted work to the FotoRoom’s first open call. The standard and breadth of work was simply outstanding. The theme ‘Family’ invited me into the private lives of many of the artists, their journeys, their homes, their loves, their traumas, their tragedies. My heart was lifted, my heart was pierced, yet ultimately my heart was filled. So thank you for letting me in.

There are five projects which I felt particularly moved by and which illustrate the high level and variety of the responses to the theme. These are naturally the two overall winners Emily Schiffer with Kin and Sandra Mehl with Ilona and Maddelena, plus Glen Erler’s Family Tree—who receives a special mention in this call—and finally Roxi Pop’s Today I Am Home and Ginebra Peña Gimeno’s My dad for a while.” (Stay tuned: these three additional series will appear on FotoRoom in the next few days along with another five editors’ picks. Sign up to our weekly newsletter to make sure you don’t miss any!).

We approached Francesca Genovese about jurying our Family call because we saw a connection between the photographers she represents and the ones we feature on FotoRoom, so we felt collaborating with her was going to be an interesting and rewarding experience. Boy, we were not wrong. Francesca was a pleasure to work with: she was excited to participate, offered a fantastic opportunity for the winner (representation through her gallery’s Print Room), eagerly looked at the submitted works and—last but not least—she assigned not one but two representation contracts, when she was not obligated to assign any at all to begin with. Thank you so much for working with us, Francesca! You were a fantastic juror for FotoRoom‘s first open call.

If you’re in London, make sure you take a short trip just outside the city to Leigh-on-Sea, where the Francesca Maffeo Gallery is based. You can currently catch the Handle Like Eggs show by the great David Chancellor (open until next 15 April). See here for the details.

Would you like to be the juror of one of FotoRoom‘s next open calls and can you offer a concrete opportunity to the winning photographer? Get in touch with us—we’ll be happy to discuss this with you.