Although photography initially emerged as a technological invention, it quickly evolved into an expressive artistic practice. Pictorialist photographs from the nineteenth century were crafted to resemble paintings, while proponents of straight photography in the early twentieth century aimed for a purely photographic approach to conveying meaning. Street photographers dedicated the medium to capturing fleeting moments, and in the latter part of the twentieth century, many photographers embraced staging and directing to employ photography as a means of artistic visual communication. Straight photography derives expressive meaning from the observed scene, while directorial, or staged photography involves creating a scene based on a preconceived notion. Art photography today encompasses various genres and creative practices, ranging from portraiture, landscape, and still life to staged, abstract, and conceptual photography. More recently, AI-generated photo-based images have also asserted their presence in the art photography scene. In this call, we invite contemporary photographers to demonstrate their understanding of photography as an expressive fine art practice in the twenty-first century.

PH21 Gallery invites photographers to submit their work for a group exhibition themed Vision and Expression: the art of photography. We welcome submissions from photographers interested in photography as an art form and looking for a venue to showcase their work to a broader international audience through the exposure provided by PH21 Gallery. The theme is broadly construed, and we encourage submissions from all artistic photographic genres and styles, including abstract compositions and AI-generated photo-based images (explicitly labelled as such). We are interested in exploring diverse and creative photographic interpretations of what photography as an art form might entail.

​ Please note that this PH21 Gallery exhibition will be presented in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, in collaboration with Valid World Hall Gallery, a renowned centre for the visual arts.

​ One curator’s choice and up to three honourable mentions will be announced. The curator’s choice receives three free entries for any upcoming themed group exhibition calls at PH21 Gallery. (Each free entry includes up to 15 images.)

Curators: Zsolt Bátori and Borbála Jász