Curated by Eric Gottesman, Hank Willis Thomas, and Wyatt Gallery of For Freedoms, an artist-run initiative that uses art as a tool for political engagement—the Aperture Summer Open is an annual, international, open-submission exhibition at Aperture Foundation’s gallery in New York, and will feature a wide variety of work drawn from diverse photographers.

This year’s Summer Open invites photographers to submit work relating to the idea of freedom.

The exhibition will feature a wide variety of work drawn from diverse photographers around the world. Selected annually by a prominent curator, editor, or curatorial team, the exhibition seeks to reveal and report on critical themes and trends driving international contemporary photographic practice. The exhibition opens the doors of the foundation to all photographers, both well- and lesser-known, whether making pictures that are documentary or constructed, as it fosters and promotes new ideas and talent.

“Working together with Aperture, we would like to ask you, as global citizens, to consider the visual language that is necessary today to communicate a new political, social, and environmental consciousness. At the core of this call are the four freedoms that were outlined in a speech given by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1941. Aiming to allay the world’s fears of growing fascism, he called for freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.
With this call to action and resulting exhibition, we want to engage photographers everywhere to join us in subverting the prevailing nostalgia for a ‘simpler’ world and to develop a way of visualizing the four freedoms from a contemporary perspective. In particular, we are interested in exploring how freedom from fear is a powerful motivator on all sides of the political equation. What is freedom? What is fear? What is terror? Are we more free by isolating ourselves from unknown others or are we more free by being able to exercise and enjoy our basic human rights? How do we respond to and counter those ideas with alternative perspectives? How do our connections to each other enable us to become free?”

—Eric Gottesman, Hank Willis Thomas, and Wyatt Gallery

Send us images that address or express what freedom looks like—or doesn’t looks like—today. Submit your work, and let your voice be heard.

Please visit: https://aperture.picter.com/ for more details.