PhotoPlace Gallery - Portals: New Perspectives Open Call

• PhotoPlace Gallery

• Deadline: April 6th, 2026

• Theme: Portals: New Perspectives

• Prize: Exhibition in Vermont (USA) + Sales

• Entry Fees: Yes

• REGISTRATION: CLICK HERE

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A portal is more than just an opening; it suggests the possibility of passage, discovery, and transformation. It invites us to pause and look through, to step beyond the visible threshold, or to imagine what might exist just out of view. A portal can separate spaces while also connecting them, marking the moment where one perspective ends and another begins.

For Portals: New Perspectives, we invite photographers to explore the visual and symbolic power of openings, thresholds, and moments of transition. Portals can appear in many forms: windows that frame distant landscapes, doorways that hint at unseen interiors, mirrors that bend reality, gates that divide public and private spaces, archways that guide the eye forward, or reflections that reveal hidden dimensions. Frames within frames, layers of architecture, and shifting viewpoints can all create visual passages that lead the viewer somewhere new.

Equally compelling are the subtle transformations created by light, shadow, and perspective. A familiar place may suddenly feel mysterious or unfamiliar when viewed through a particular angle or moment of illumination. Through photography, everyday environments can become spaces of curiosity and imagination, where the boundary between what is seen and what is suggested begins to blur.

We also welcome photographs that approach the idea of portals in a more interpretive or conceptual way. A portal might symbolize personal change, emotional movement, memory, or the crossing from one state of being to another. It might evoke nostalgia, anticipation, or the quiet tension between past and future. Whether your work is urban or rural, interior or exterior, documentary or conceptual, we encourage you to show how photography itself becomes a portal—opening new ways of seeing and understanding the world.

We are honored to have Ann Jastrab serve as the juror for Portals: New Perspectives. She will select up to 35 photographs for exhibition in our gallery in Middlebury, Vermont, along with an additional 40 images for presentation in our Online Gallery. All 75 selected photographs will be reproduced in the exhibition catalog, permanently featured on our website, and promoted across our social media platforms with links to each photographer’s website or portfolio.