21 April 2026

HAPAX ANNOUNCES COMMISSIONS FOR ITS NINTH ISSUE

We are pleased to announce the recipients of the next HAPAX artist and curator commissions who are currently making new work for our next issue, to be published in Autumn 2026. Following our free call-out for submissions of interest, the editors have selected the following artists and curators to create their photographic features with us on the pages of our next HAPAX Magazine:

Holly Lynton is an artist working in photography whose multidisciplinary, research-based practice includes writing, historical research, and collaborative work in other media. Her work explores the intersections of faith, labor, history, and land in rural communities in the United States, with a focus on contemporary rituals and traditions rooted in history. Through the use of recognizable symbols and references, she examines how cultural visual memory shapes the way photographs are seen and understood. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Nelson-Atkins Museum, the Yale University Art Gallery, and the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University and her photographs and books are held in major public collections including the MoMA Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art Watson Library, Tate Museum Library, and the Center for Creative Photography. Her first book, Bare Handed (2022), was published by L’Artiere Edizioni. Lynton has received numerous awards and grants, including the Collection Award from Duke University’s Archive of Documentary Arts, an Aaron Siskind Fellowship, and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship. Her work has appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times, and The Guardian. She holds a BA in Psychology from Yale University and an MFA in Photography from Bard College, and is based in rural Massachusetts. Holly’s feature was selected in collaboration with Bristol Photo Festival 2026.

Sergey Novikovis a photographer whose projects focus on studying the economy and culture of territories and societies, as well as the mechanisms by which they function. His photographic practice includes interventions in urban landscapes, staging, and reenactments of the visual marks of modernity. His dummies and photo books have been shortlisted for several awards, including the BOPFOLIO Bristol (2024), the Images Vevey Dummy Award (2019 and 2021), the Luma Rencontres Dummy Book Award in Arles (2016 and 2017), the Photobookfest Moscow Dummy Award (2017 and 2018), and the Anamorphosis Prize (2016). His projects and individual images have been exhibited in both solo and group shows at numerous venues, including Photoworks Weekender in Brighton; Salon/24, Photofusion in London; AFF Gallery in Berlin; Format Festival in Derby; the Noorderlicht Photography Festival in Groningen; and many others. Based in London.

Akin Oladimeji is a writer, lecturer, curator and critic working across various forms. His fiction, essays, and criticism have appeared in Aperture, Berlin Artlink, Burlington Contemporary, e-flux, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, Photomonitor, Third Text Online, Wasafiri and elsewhere. He was awarded an Arts and Humanities Research Council studentship for his PhD starting September 2024 via the London Arts and Humanities Partnership at University College London. His dissertation critically examines how the performance practices of Jelili Atiku, Wura-Natasha Ogunji, and Zina Saro-Wiwa negotiate the entanglement of African concepts of performativity with Euro-American aesthetic and institutional paradigms.  Akin will be collaborating with Frida Orupabo for their HAPAX 9 feature.

Frida Orupabo is a photographer and artist born in 1986 in Sarpsborg who currently lives and works in Oslo. She has had major solo exhibitions at prestigious institutions worldwide, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lisbon (2026), Sprengel Museum in Hanover, and the Astrup Fearnley Museum in Oslo. Her work has been recognized internationally through participation in major biennales such as the Venice Biennale (2018) and the São Paulo Biennial (2021), and she has received significant awards including the SPECTRUM International Photography Prize (2025) and the Royal Photographic Society Honorary Fellowship (2023). Her work is held in the collections of over 30 major museums and institutions globally, including the Tate, Guggenheim Museum, LACMA, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Frida will be collaborating with Akin Oladimeji for their HAPAX 9 feature.

Chino Otsuka is a photographer, educator, and writer. Born in Japan, she moved to the UK to attend Summerhill School, and her experience of growing up as a third culture kid continues to inform her life and practice. Working with private and public photographic archives, Otsuka explores how personal and collective histories shape our understanding of identity and belonging, with particular attention to the ways memory operates through vernacular and snapshot photography. Her acclaimed series Imagine Finding Me has been exhibited in over 18 countries and featured in numerous publications and academic texts. Her work is held in the permanent collections of major international museums. Her practice-based research has led to an artist residency at the Nikkei National Museum in Canada and a creative research fellowship at the British Library. She has also authored four books published in Japan. With over 20 years of experience in photography education, she has taught as a museum educator, lecturer, and guest speaker at universities in the UK and abroad and continues to support the next generation of image-makers.

Duncan Wooldridge is an artist, writer and curator, and is Reader in Photography at the School of Digital Arts, Manchester School of Art, MMU. He is the author of 'To Be Determined: Photography and the Future' (SPBH/Mack), the editor of the forthcoming ‘Written Down / Written Up: Collected Writings of John Hilliard’ (Mack) and the co-editor of Writer Conversations and Photobook Conversations (both published by 1000 Words) and 'The Routledge Companion to Global Photographies' (Routledge). He lives and works in Manchester. 

Christiane Zschommler was raised in East Berlin and relocated to the UK in 1992, where she studied Photography at the University of Westminster. Her practice explores memory, duration, and the subtle aftereffects of political and social systems, informed in part by her upbringing in the former GDR. Working across photography, artist books, archival material, and site-responsive processes, she investigates how images and objects shift in meaning over time through processes of repetition, light, and material transformation.  Her work has been exhibited internationally, including a solo exhibition at Maison Heinrich Heine, Paris, and presentations at York Art Gallery as part of the Aesthetica Art Prize exhibitions (2019–2021), and Brighton Photo Fringe. Alongside her artistic practice, she worked as a photography teacher in the UK for over 15 years.

Notes:

HAPAX is co-directed by Christiane Monarchi and Gordon MacDonald. HAPAX Magazine takes its name from the literary term ‘hapax legomenon’ describing something unique, new and ‘said only once’. Twice a year, HAPAX Magazine commissions artists and curators (£500 each) to produce new photographic projects which are shared only in the pages of the publication and not on the internet.

Work is underway on the creation of the ninth issue, to be published Autumn 2026. This issue marks 56 commissions of artist and curator features undertaken to date.

A call-out for the next issue will be announced when publication dates for the ninth issue are confirmed. The editors of HAPAX are interested in hearing from artists and curators working with photography in any form and encourage submissions from everyone, regardless of experience, qualification, nationality, geographical location or background.

Issues of HAPAX are available for purchase from bookshops and online, and distributed by Public Knowledge Books.

Proceeds from sales of magazines are reinvested into future publishing commissions, to support photographic projects and the creative professionals making them.

For more information contact editors@hapaxmagazine.com