Decagon Gallery - "Self" International Photography Exhibition

• Decagon Gallery

• Deadline: November 17th, 2026

• Theme: Self

• Prize: $1,000 Prize Pool + Online Exhibition

• Entry Fees: Yes

• REGISTRATION: CLICK HERE

Some photographs are created to show us something about the world around us. Others turn the camera inward, becoming a way to search, question, and discover something about the person behind the lens. SELF is an exhibition dedicated to the second kind: photographs born from introspection, vulnerability, and the often complicated experience of looking closely at oneself.

We invite self-portraits that move beyond simple resemblance or physical likeness. We are interested in images created through an honest encounter with the self — whether that encounter is uncomfortable, tender, confronting, mysterious, or unexpected. This is not a call for vanity, perfection, or performance. Instead, we are looking for photographs that emerge from a genuine moment of reckoning: an attempt to understand a body, confront a memory, process a loss, embrace a transformation, or give shape to a question that could not be expressed through words alone.

Self-portraiture is among photography's oldest and most intimate forms. When the photographer turns the camera toward themselves, the camera becomes both mirror and witness, creating a space between what is revealed and what remains private. There is no external subject to direct and no one else to hide behind. The photographer must decide how they will appear, what they will expose, and what they will keep for themselves.

We welcome work engaging with identity, aging, illness, grief, joy, gender, memory, solitude, family, transformation, and the body. Submissions may be staged or spontaneous, carefully constructed or direct and unembellished, presented as a single image or developed into a series. Above all, we are looking for work with genuine emotional weight — photographs in which the artist has taken the risk of looking inward and allowing themselves, in some way, to be seen.