Texas Photographic Society is proud to announce the call for entry for a new online exhibition, the TPS Portfolio Project, juried by Alan Thomas, Editorial Director at the University of Chicago Press.

The TPS Portfolio Project is designed to provide an in-depth showcase of five artists' photographic projects—featuring ten images and a statement from each artist in an online gallery. A catalog will also be created for the exhibition. In addition to the five artists chosen for the exhibition, the juror may choose a small number of images by additional artists as honorable mentions.

The TPS Portfolio Project is open to artists of all levels, internationally, who are developing or have completed a consistent body of photographic work. This call is open to all subject matter, aesthetic approaches, and photographic processes. Submissions must include a minimum of ten images from a single body of work and an artist's statement (up to 200 words). Up to six additional images in the same series may also be submitted for consideration. (If more than ten images are submitted by a selected artist, the juror will select the ten images to be included in the exhibition.)

Texas Photographic Society works to support and encourage photographic artists, internationally, at every stage of their creative practice. In addition to our regular roster of group exhibitions presented in partnership with arts venues around Texas, and our biennial one-person show during FotoFest, we also present two annual online exhibitions for students from elementary grades though college and continuing studies programs. The choice of an online exhibition for the TPS Portfolio Project was carefully considered as a way to make participation most accessible to all of the artists we serve—freeing them from the expense and logistics that would be required to frame/pack/ship ten images and therefore allowing them to simply focus on the images.

CALENDAR OF EVENTS

September 14, 2024 - Call for entry opens on CaFÉ
October 29, 2024 - Deadline for entry (11:59 Mountain Time Zone)
November 22, 2024 – Award Recipient Announced

AWARDS

$200 cash award to each of five selected artists and inclusion in online gallery and printed catalog

ENTRY FEE

Entry fee for the required ten images is $38 for Non-Members, $30 for TPS Members (applicants can become a member through CaFÉ website at time of entry). Up to six additional images from the same series may be submitted for $6 each image.

TPS Member Benefits include member feature opportunities via our Members' Gallery, Member Spotlight, Blog, Members' News, Members' Instagram Takeover, social media accounts and E-Zine, discounted entry fees to most TPS competitions, and discounts to programs and services offered through our partnerships.

If you are not sure of your TPS member status, please contact TPS at ann@texasphoto.org. All entry and membership fees are non-refundable.


NOTE: Some of you asked whether you could submit more than one body of work for consideration, and the answer is YES! I checked with CaFÉ about the logistics of doing that, and here is their response:

The artist would need to create a second account on CaFE. They can use the same contact information (name, email, phone, address, etc.) as their original account, however, the username must be different Once they've created their second account, they'll be able to locate the call again and start a second application. They'll then need to complete the checkout process again in order to submit their second application - meaning they will pay separately for each application. Once the artist submits, you will see their name and entries as you normally would on the admin side of CaFE. If the artist runs in to any snags, please feel free to direct them to our artist support team at: Cafe@westaf.org and we're happy to assist.

IMPORTANT: The juror will need to know if he is considering more than one body of work by the same person. CaFÉ advises that the clearest and easiest way to to that is to use your original user name with -SecondAccount at the end. So if your user name is anseladams, your second account username would be anseladams-SecondAccount. Please contact me at ann@texasphoto.org if you have any questions.

JUROR'S STATEMENT

Although we are all awash in photographic imagery, pictures made with integrity and commitment still have the power to arrest our attention and to move us. I am especially interested in bodies of photographic work with a strong narrative, documentary, or conceptual dimension that nevertheless feature compelling individual pictures. I also admire the work of photographers who are conscious of building in some small way on histories of the medium while showing us things that we haven’t seen before and fresh ways of looking. I am looking forward to seeing a rich variety of photographic work as a juror for the TPS Portfolio Project!
- - - Alan Thomas

ABOUT THE JUROR

Alan Thomas is editorial director at the University of Chicago Press and a photographer specializing in urban landscape. As a publisher, Thomas acquires and edits books in the humanities, including books in photography and visual studies. As a photographer, he has work in the Museum of Contemporary Photography’s Midwest Photographer’s Project and has exhibited at the Process Gallery at Indiana University; Perspective Gallery in Evanston, IL; Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago; the Flak Photo Midwest Print Show in Madison, WI; Photo Works Gallery in Glen Echo, MD; and other venues. In 2012, his one-person show at the Seagull Foundation for the Arts, Kolkata, India, surveyed photographs made over two decades in Chicago, Tokyo, and Kolkata. Thomas's book, 55x5, with an introduction by Kathryn Lofton, was published by Marquand Editions in 2018. For more information, visit www.alan-thomas.com.

All the work of Texas Photographic Society is made possible through funding from the Texas Commission on the Arts, a partnership with Fujifilm, and the generous support of our TPS Members.

QUESTIONS?

If you have any questions, please contact TPS Executive Director Ann T. Shaw at ann@texasphoto.org.

Application Requirements

Please submit digital JPG files only, minimum of 1200 pixels on the longest side and 5 MB maximum. Please remove watermarks from images. For each image you will need to provide the image title and the process (medium) used to make the image/print (Archival Digital Print, Silver Gelatin Print, Platinum/Palladium Print, Wet Plate Collodian, etc.) 

Submitting an artist statement about this body of work is strongly encouraged.

Eligibility Criteria

The TPS National Photography Award is open to artists of all levels, internationally, who are developing or have completed a consistent body of photographic work. All photographic-based art is welcome. You do not need to be a member of the Texas Photographic Society to enter this competition. Current members of the TPS Board of Directors, previous recipients of the TPS National Photography Award, or artists represented by a commercial gallery are NOT eligible for entry.