Photo Courtesy of Shutterstock / Everett Collection
"Beauty" is a loaded, complicated, and occasionally so-overused-it's-neutralized term in photography and beyond. A quick Google search turns up everything from On Beauty, Zadie Smith's 2005 novel, to Robert Adams' classic photography book of the same title. A likely first thought for fellow visual literacy junkies might be the ever-present "male gaze" -- the idea, described by John Berger and officially coined by Laura Mulvey decades ago-- that every aspect of visual media and history has been filtered through a heterosexual male lens. While our thoughts bounce from slick, and often damaging fashion campaigns to countless cinematic tropes, they also toggle between hackneyed photographs of sunsets and flowers, and early ennobled American landscape photographs that fueled Manifest Destiny. Idealization at its imagined finest.
Where are we going with this?
For Group Show # 53: On Beauty we'd like to see photographs, gifs, photo-based collage and a range of other light-sensitive media that address and dissect how beauty is represented and understood. How has rapidly shifting image-culture influenced our perceptions of the visual ideal? Like most of our open calls, the conceptual guidelines are open to interpretation. We invite you to get crazy, think outside expectation, and subvert our minds.
We're excited to welcome one of our favorite writers and curators Roula Seikaly to co-curate the exhibition with Humble's co-founder Jon Feinstein.
Submission Details:
DEADLINE:
May 15th, 2017
GUIDELINES:
1. Please submit your 50-ish word bio, statement and other information via THIS FORM.
2. Email five (5) JPGs at 1,800 pixels on the longest side to submit AT hafny DOT org with
"On Beauty Submission" in the subject line, and each image titled with your name and the title of the image (i.e. Andy_Warhol_Banana_01)
IMPORTANT: Please do NOT submit zipped folders of images.
ALSO IMPORTANT: Please do NOT watermark your images. We promise you, if we use them, we will give you proper attribution, but cannot take submissions seriously that include watermarks.
OPTIONAL:
Want quicker visibility on your submissions? AFTER submitting via email, Hashtag #HAFONBEAUTY and @humbleartsfoundation on Instagram.
FEE: None.
PLEASE READ:
All submissions must follow the above guidelines.
Roula Seikaly and Humble's co-founder and curatorial director Jon Feinstein will select photographers to feature in HAFNY's online Group Show #53: On Beauty" which will go live on Humble's website in June, 2017, and potentially be shared on Humble's Instagram. We will announce selected photographers via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram feed and through our mailing list.
About the Curators:
Roula Seikaly is a writer and independent curator based in San Francisco. Her writing is featured on platforms including Aperture, Saint Lucy, Strange Fire Collective, Temporary Art Review, SF Camerawork, and KQED Arts. She has curated exhibitions at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, Triple Base Gallery, and SOMArts. Follow her on Instagram.
Jon Feinstein is Humble's co-founder and curatorial director. He has curated exhibitions Glassbox Gallery in Seattle, Photographic Center Northwest, Hasted Kraeutler, and Phillips de Pury. His writing has appeared in Daylight, Slate, and Time, and his numerous projects have been featured in Vice, Aperture, The New York Times, HyperAllergic and The New Yorker, among others. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @jonfeinstein.