The City Wakes
Morning rituals, markets opening, preparation, first journeys and the ways Kolkata comes alive at the beginning of the day.
Your City. Your Lens. Unlimited Stories.
An open call for photographers, students and visual storytellers.
WHAT IS KOLKATA TO YOU?
What do you love to capture about the city? How the city wakes up or moves over the day? Places and structures that have witnessed the city change but through generations? How the communities are built over chai and adda? Or how Calcutta changes its mood as the sun goes down? People, Places, Moments, and Experiences that define Kolkata for you.
Entries may be submitted as photographs (upto 3), a photo story (5-10 images) or a short moving image (video). Phone and camera submissions are welcome.
Selected works will be presented at MKIK Exhibition at the Kolkata Centre for Creativity from 10–15 December 2026.
There will be awards and recognitions for jury’s top selections in each of the 3 categories.
So submit your entries now! Let’s see what’s Kolkata to you.
Categories for Submission
Explore six city themes
Entries may engage with one or more of the following broad directions. These are prompts for exploration, not fixed categories.
The City Works
Labour, markets, transport, craftsmanship, commerce, workshops and the people and systems that keep the city moving.
The City Remembers
Old homes, neighbourhoods, objects, traditions, practices and places that carry memory or are slowly disappearing.
The City Changes
New neighbourhoods, construction, infrastructure, technology, migration, climate and changing ways of living.
The City Belongs
Families, friendships, communities, public spaces, solitude and the different ways people inhabit and belong to the city.
The City Dreams
Night, leisure, youth, art, music, aspiration, imagination and the quieter or unexpected expressions of Kolkata.
Formats & Fees
Find your format
Participants may enter one, two or all three formats. Each format will be considered independently.
Single Photograph
Submit: Up to 3 photographs
Entry Fee₹500
Photo Story
Submit: One photo story of up to 10 photographs, accompanied by a synopsis of up to 100 words
Entry Fee₹1,000
Moving Kolkata
Submit: One original video of up to 30 seconds
Entry Fee₹500
Moving Kolkata
A portrait of the city in motion
Moving Kolkata invites participants to observe the city through short-form moving images.
The submission may capture a moment, rhythm, sound, gesture or everyday observation that reveals something about Kolkata. It is intended as a visual study of the city rather than a conventional social media reel.
Student Entry
Applicable for 2 categories.
- 1. Single Photograph — Submit: Up to 3 photographs
- 2. Photo Story — Submit: One photo story of up to 10 photographs, accompanied by a synopsis of up to 100 words
Entry Fee₹250 per category
A valid student ID must be submitted with the entry.
Submit your Entry
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Step 1: Pay the Entry Fee
Select your chosen submission format and complete the applicable entry payment.
Save the payment receipt as a screenshot or a PDF and move onto the Google Form link.
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Step 2: Complete the Submission Form
Fill in your details, upload your work and enter the Payment ID from your receipt.
Students must also upload a valid student ID.
Submission Form
Selection Process
All submissions will be reviewed by a four-member external jury.
Event Details
Guidelines
Who Can Enter
- Photographers, students and visual storytellers may participate.
- Phone and camera submissions are both welcome.
- All submitted work must be created in Kolkata.
- Entries must be the participant’s own original work.
Submission Guidelines
- Photographs
- File format
- JPEG
- Image size
- 3000 px on the long edge
- Maximum file size
- 10 MB per image
- EXIF data
- Mandatory
- Watermarks and borders
- Not permitted
- Moving Kolkata
- Duration
- Maximum 30 seconds
- File format
- MP4, H.264
- Resolution
- Minimum 1080p
- Orientation
- 16:9 or 9:16
- Music
- Unlicensed music is not permitted
Editing Guidelines
Permitted
For photographs:
- Exposure adjustment
- Colour and contrast correction
- Black-and-white conversion
- Dust removal
- Reasonable cropping
For video:
- Cuts
- Colour correction
- Sound balancing
Not Permitted
- AI-generated imagery
- Generative fill
- Adding, removing or materially relocating visual elements
- Stock footage in video submissions
- AI-generated video or visual material
About the Curator
Sangeet Kothari
Curator, My Kolkata in Kolkata 6.0 | As part of AMI Arts Festival 2026
Sangeet Kothari is a Kolkata-based communication consultant and co-owner of Echo Connect, a boutique outreach agency working closely with entrepreneurs, enterprises peer to peer networks and social initiatives.
For as long as she can remember holding a camera, Sangeet has been photographing the world around her. Over more than 20 years, it has been a constant companion: at gatherings with friends and family, on everyday walks through her surroundings, and in the passing, unplanned moments most people miss.
For nearly two decades, Kolkata has been her greatest teacher. Sangeet has walked countless kilometres through the city’s back streets, and her fascination with built heritage has deepened a bond that goes far beyond the frame. To her, the city exists in so many layers that exploring it never stops.
At the heart of her work is the romance of exploration: the magic of not knowing what waits around the next bend. A familiar landmark can be photographed any day. The unscheduled, the spontaneous and the real-time cannot. For Sangeet, a street is never just a street. It is an evolving theatre, where a frame shifts and becomes something new with each hour of the day, each passer-by and each small activity. She sees her role simply as a witness to that theatre in one moment of time. The photograph, that single millisecond of the click, is only the outcome. The real art lies in the walking, the searching and the patient discovery that comes before it.
Photography is also, for her, a form of meditation. In the quiet process of absorbing a space, observing and waiting for something interesting to happen, the rest of the world falls away. It has taught her empathy too: to be inclusive and sensitive to the lives and struggles of the people she meets along the way. Standing chest-deep in the Ganges among thousands of people performing Mahalaya rituals, she describes feeling transported beyond herself, beyond the place and beyond words.
For Sangeet, photography was never about being technically perfect, colour-corrected images made for a wall or for Instagram. It is about a moment that is here for a second and then gone, one that may never happen, or be captured, again.
As curator of My Kolkata in Kolkata 2026 at the Kolkata Centre for Creativity, Sangeet brings this way of seeing to the exhibition. Through this year’s theme, “What is your Kolkata?”, she invites photographers of every kind to wander, witness and share the city as they truly see it, feel it and live it.
