About

PhotoNations is a world map of photographers, ranked country against country. Photographers put their name on their country and city, enter seasonal contests, and their results move their country up the table.

It is not a marketplace. There is no booking, no rates, no enquiry form and no “hire me”. The site exists for prestige and belonging, not for finding clients. If a feature would make it easier to sell photography rather than to be recognised for it, it does not belong here.

Joining is by application, and the question is only whether you are a photographer. It is not a judgement of whether your work is good — that is what the contests are for, and they are decided by other photographers and by an invited jury.

The gate exists because the country race would otherwise be won by whoever recruited the most people, photographers or not. It is one decision about a person, made once. Everything you upload afterwards publishes immediately.

A site that ranks countries has to publish a list of them, and any such list is contested by somebody.

Ours follows ISO 3166-1, the international standard for country codes, with one exception: Kosovo, which ISO has never assigned a code, is included as XK — the user-assigned code the EU and most software already use. We did not assemble the rest of the list and we do not add, remove or rename entries.

A country’s presence or absence is a data decision, not a statement about sovereignty. We will not change it to advance a territorial claim, from any side. If we have made a factual error against the standard, tell us and we will fix it.

Photographers enter a small number of photographs. The community votes first, and that vote is blind — no name, no country, no title. §6 of our plan puts the reason bluntly: the moment a photograph carries a flag in a national race, people vote for the flag rather than the picture.

An invited jury of curators and gallery owners then scores a shortlist. Jurors cannot enter the contest they judge, do not see who took a photograph or where it is from, and cannot see each other’s scores.

PhotoNations was founded by Milad Safabakhsh, who also founded the Minimalist Photography Awards.

That is the background this comes out of: running an international photography award, and seeing how much of what photographers want from one is not the prize but the recognition of being counted among their peers.

Every photograph can be reported from its own page. If work of yours has been posted by somebody else, the takedown process does not require an account.

What we collect and why is in the privacy notice; the rules of use are in the terms.