PhotoPlace Gallery - International Photography Open Call

• PhotoPlace Gallery

• Deadline: October 5th, 2026

• Theme: The Human Experience

• Prize: Exhibition in Vermont (USA) + Sales

• Entry Fees: Yes

• REGISTRATION: CLICK HERE

PhotoPlace Gallery is pleased to invite photographers to submit work to The Human Experience, a juried exhibition examining the many dimensions of human life and the diverse ways photography can document, interpret, and communicate them. The exhibition is open to a wide range of photographic approaches and encourages artists to consider the theme from personal, social, cultural, documentary, conceptual, or observational perspectives.

We are seeking compelling photographs that explore people, relationships, communities, cultures, identities, experiences, and the environments in which human life unfolds. Eligible work may include portraits, street photography, documentary photography, photojournalism, current-affairs imagery, family photographs, images of labor and work, cultural documentation, explorations of identity and belonging, and photographs addressing the relationships between individuals and their communities.

The theme is intentionally broad. We encourage photographers to interpret The Human Experience in ways that are meaningful to their own practice. Work may focus on an individual story or speak to a larger social or cultural issue. It may document a specific place or moment in time, explore an ongoing human condition, or present a more conceptual interpretation of what it means to live, work, connect, struggle, adapt, remember, and belong.

We welcome photographs that find meaning in both everyday moments and extraordinary circumstances. The selected work may address celebration, intimacy, family, friendship, love, community, and connection, as well as isolation, conflict, inequality, displacement, grief, hardship, uncertainty, and social change. We are interested in the complexity of human experience and in work that does not necessarily offer simple answers, but instead encourages viewers to engage, reflect, and consider perspectives beyond their own.

Submissions do not need to depict people directly. Photographers may also explore human experience through places, architecture, landscapes, interiors, objects, events, and other visual evidence of human presence. A deserted room can suggest a relationship; a street can reveal a community; a workplace can speak to identity and economic life; an altered landscape can document human impact. We welcome photographs that use these and other visual approaches to communicate stories about humanity.

Both documentary and conceptual work are encouraged. Photographers may submit images that are intimate or expansive, subtle or dramatic, spontaneous or carefully constructed. Traditional and contemporary approaches are welcome, provided the work offers a strong and thoughtful response to the exhibition theme.

PhotoPlace Gallery is honored to welcome Meredith Fleischer as juror for The Human Experience. Fleischer will select up to 35 photographs for the in-person exhibition at PhotoPlace Gallery in Middlebury, Vermont. Approximately 40 additional photographs will be selected for presentation in the PhotoPlace Online Gallery, creating an opportunity for a broader range of artists and photographic perspectives to be included.

Selected photographers will receive significant ongoing exposure through PhotoPlace Gallery. Every selected image will be reproduced in the official exhibition book, providing a lasting record of the exhibition and the artists represented. Selected work will also remain permanently available on the PhotoPlace Gallery website, allowing viewers to discover the work beyond the duration of the physical exhibition. In addition, PhotoPlace Gallery will promote selected artists and their photographs through its publications and social media channels.

We invite photographers to submit work that is thoughtful, engaging, and visually compelling—work that reveals something about the lives we lead, the worlds we create, and the connections that define us. Through The Human Experience, PhotoPlace Gallery seeks to present a diverse and meaningful collection of photographic perspectives on what it means to be human.