This year’s Aperture Summer Open seeks new work from photographers around the world whose images are defining a moment of rapid change in culture, politics, technology, and self-expression.

2018 Aperture Summer Open

The Aperture Summer Open is an annual open-submission exhibition at Aperture Foundation’s gallery in New York, featuring a wide variety of work by photographers from around the world. Selected by a jury of leading editors and critics, the exhibition seeks to reveal and report on key themes and trends driving contemporary photography. The exhibition opens the doors of the foundation to photographers of all ages, at all points in their careers, as we seek to promote new ideas and talent.

The theme of the 2018 Aperture Summer Open is “The Way We Live Now.” The curators seek new bodies of work by photographers defining a moment of rapid change in culture, politics, technology, and self-expression. Across ideas of beauty and style, landscape and environment, and media and connectivity, how do photographs define the currents and contradictions of our moment?

The 2018 Aperture Summer Open is curated by Brendan Wattenberg, managing editor, Aperture magazine; Siobhán Bohnacker, senior photo editor, the New Yorker; Marvin Orellana, photo editor, New York magazine; and Antwaun Sargent, independent writer and critic.

What winners receive

Winners of the Summer Open will be exhibited in a group show at Aperture Gallery, opening June 28, 2018. All finalists are announced in the foundation’s e-newsletter, which reaches fifty thousand subscribers across the globe, including curators, critics, and members of the photography community.

About Aperture

Aperture, a not-for-profit foundation, connects the photo community and its audiences with the most inspiring work, the sharpest ideas, and with each other — in print, in person, and online. Created in 1952 by photographers and writers as “common ground for the advancement of photography”, Aperture today is a multi-platform publisher and center for the photo community. From our base in New York, we produce, publish, and present a program of photography projects, locally and internationally.

Juror Information

Brendan Wattenberg is the managing editor of Aperture magazine. Formerly the director of exhibitions at the Walther Collection, he has contributed essays and interviews to Another Africa, Contemporary And, Objektiv,and Aperture's PhotoBook Review, and is the editor of the photobooks François-Xavier Gbré: The Past Is a Foreign Country and Samuel Fosso: The Spectacle of the Body. Wattenberg holds a BA in English from Haverford College and an MA in Africana Studies from New York University. He has served on the jury for the Addis Foto Fest in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (2016), the Changjiang International Photography and Video Biennale in Chongqing, China (2017), and Photo Israel, Tel Aviv (2017).

Siobhán Bohnacker is a senior photo editor at the New Yorker, where she commissions original photography for the magazine and curates photography for newyorker.com. Prior to joining the New Yorker, she worked as a photo editor at the New York Times Magazine and from 2009 to 2012, worked with NGOs, non-profits, and advertising clients on the production of high-profile portfolios and campaigns. She has served as on-set producer on over two hundred photo shoots, most notably at the White House for "Going the Distance," David Remnick's profile of President Barack Obama (2014), and "Portraits of Power," an ASME-winning portfolio of fifty-six heads of state, photographed at the United Nations and published in the New Yorker in 2009. A fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Bohnacker has been a guest lecturer at the photography programs at Yale, the Cooper Union, and the School of Visual Arts, and has served on the jury for numerous international photo contests. She is a graduate of Central Saint Martins, London.

Marvin Orellana has been a photo editor at New York Magazine since 2013. Previously he worked at the New York Times Magazine. He is a graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology, where he studied photojournalism.

Antwaun Sargent is a writer and critic living and working in New York City. Recently he wrote "We Are More Than This," an essay for the Tate Modern on the occasion of the museum's exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, and was in conversation with filmmaker and artist Arthur Jafa in the Dallas Museum of Art's Truth: 24 frames per second exhibition catalogue. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Nation, Vogue, W Magazine, VICE magazine, and Aperture magazine.

Timeline

Call For Entries Open

19 February 2018

Submission Deadline

8 April 2018

Notification Of Selected Artists

June 2018

Exhibition Start

27 June 2018

Exhibition End

16 August 2018

Requirements

Submission Requirements

Maximum of one project
Minimum of 8 images, max 12
Image size: min. 1500px on the long side, sRGB
Project description with up to 1500 characters
Biography and CV

Entrance Fees

$30
Free for Aperture Members

Terms & Conditions

FAQ

Images Of Previous Events

2017: On Freedom curated by For Freedoms

2016: Photography is Magic curated by Charlotte Cotton

2015: Black Mirror curated by Michael Famighetti

Aperture Foundation reserves the right to reject entries that are submitted without the required information, or that do not meet the criteria of eligibility, without any obligation to enter into any further discussion regarding curator’s decisions, and without obligation to refund the entrant’s submission fee.

The curator’s decisions shall be final. No correspondence shall be entered into by Aperture Foundation, nor its representatives, regarding the decisions of the curator(s). Aperture Foundation reserves the right to reject submitted print(s) of photograph(s) or artworks for inclusion in the exhibition for any reason, including print quality. While copyright of all work submitted for this exhibition remains with the respective entrants, the entrant grants to Aperture Foundation a worldwide, irrevocable, and perpetual license to reproduce representative examples of the submitted entries in any of their publications, websites, and/or in any promotional material, strictly in connection with the exhibition, and with reference to the photographer as relevant in each case. Details of particular entries may be at the discretion of Aperture Foundation and may be released to the press to promote the exhibition, including before the announcement of the shortlist for the exhibition. Some entries may be featured on the Aperture Foundation blog.

Aperture Foundation accepts no responsibility for entries that are lost or damaged in transit.

Representatives of Aperture Foundation are not available to review unsolicited materials received except as entered via the Summer Open exhibition. Applicants warrant that the entry submission is the original work of the artist and, as such, the artist is the sole and exclusive owner and rights holder of the submitted work, and that the party submitting has the right to submit the work for exhibition and grant all required licenses. Each entrant agrees not to submit any entry that (1) infringes any third party’s proprietary rights, intellectual property rights, industrial property rights, personal or moral rights, or any other rights, including without limitation, copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret, privacy, publicity, or confidentiality obligations; and (2) otherwise violates the applicable state, federal, provincial, or local law.

Aperture Foundation reserves complete creative control over the exhibition’s design, including selection, layout, and hanging. It is understood that prints provided unframed for the exhibition will be hung without frames, using pins or magnets. If selected for the exhibition, additional information regarding the terms of loan of your work(s) will be provided. It should be understood that delivery of artwork(s) to Aperture, as well as retrieving artwork(s) from Aperture after the exhibition, is the responsibility of the artist.

No exceptions will be made for late submissions. By submitting your work to the 2018 Aperture Summer Open, you are found to be in agreement of the terms and conditions listed above.