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Personality: The Face and Its Absence

@ PH21 Gallery Barcelona

A curated international photography exhibition

August 22 – September 15, 2026

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Portraiture emerged as one of the most prominent genres of depictive media early in the history of the visual arts, and tacit or explicit rules, conventions, and cultural expectations have always influenced the ways in which artists approached the genre. Photography is no exception; numerous different and characteristic styles of portraiture have emerged throughout the history of the medium.

Today, we live in an exciting new era for portraiture. There has never been a time in human history when so many portraits and self-portraits were produced day after day as in the era of digital technologies. Photographers have responded to these cultural, social, and technological changes by reinterpreting the age-old genre of portraiture in countless creative ways.

We usually assume that faces are necessary components of portraiture. However, we may learn just as much about the character, personality, identity, or presence of a person by looking at images that depict other parts of their bodies, gestures, clothing, objects, surroundings, or places associated with them. Not focusing on the face may open up new dimensions of interpretation, while traditional portraits may continue to reveal the complexity of personality through expression, pose, light, setting, and photographic style.

 

PH21 Gallery invites photographers to submit their work for a group exhibition themed Personality: The Face and Its Absence. We welcome submissions from all photographers interested in this genre, providing them with an opportunity to share their work with a broader international audience through the exposure offered by PH21 Gallery. The theme is broadly construed: from traditional fine art portraits to selfies, from facial portraits to images that portray personality through the body, objects, spaces, traces, absence, or symbolic associations. Indeed, we are interested in all possible creative photographic interpretations of the theme. We welcome all types of photo-based images, including multiple exposures, photomontages, photograms, moving-image works, and AI-generated photo-based images.

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

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This exhibition will be showcased in PH21 Gallery’s beautiful new venue, situated in the heart of Barcelona’s historic Gothic Quarter.

 

Curators: Zsolt Bátori and Borbála Jász

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Zsolt Bátori is a curator, photographer, photography theorist, philosopher of art, and educator. He is the founder, director, and curator of PH21 Gallery Barcelona (formerly Budapest), which has presented international group and solo exhibitions for over a decade in Barcelona and Budapest, and has also organised exhibitions in collaboration with partner galleries in Rome and Jersey City. Zsolt has nurtured the careers of many photographers who received further exhibition and career opportunities after exhibiting at PH21 Gallery. After earning his PhD in Philosophy from Rutgers University, Zsolt has taught and conducted research at universities in Hungary, the USA, Argentina, and Spain, and his own photographic work has been exhibited internationally. Since 2023, he has served as a juror for Photolucida Critical Mass, and in 2026 he was invited to join Photolucida’s Board of Directors.

For Zsolt's website, please click here.

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Borbála Jász is a curator, art historian, philosopher of art, and educator. She has served as the vice-director and curator of PH21 Gallery for many years, providing international exhibition and career opportunities for photographers worldwide. Borbála earned her first doctoral degree in Philosophy and Art History from Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, and is currently pursuing a second PhD in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. As an art historian, Borbála is especially perceptive to the cultural and historical context, significance, and interconnectedness of photographic images. She also has first-hand experience with the artistic, legal, and practical aspects of collections, having worked extensively with collectors. Since 2025, Borbála has served as a juror for Photolucida Critical Mass, and in 2026 she was invited to join Photolucida’s Board of Directors.

 

Submission deadlines

• Early bird deadline: June 15, 2026

• Final deadline: June 22, 2026

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Notification: All entrants will be notified 10-15 days after the final deadline.​

 

 

There are two submission options:

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A) Standard submission:

 

Until the early bird deadline:

You may submit 3, 5, 7, 10, or 15 images; these may be all individual works, or they may also include a series of maximum 5 photographs. The entry fee is €25.00 for the first 3 images, €30.00 for 5 images, €35.00 for 7 images, €40.00 for 10 images, and €45.00 for 15 images.

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After the early bird deadline:

The entry fee after the early bird deadline is €30.00 for the first 3 images, €35.00 for 5 images, €40.00 for 7 images, €45.00 for 10 images, and €50.00 for 15 images.

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B) Special fee:

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Until the early bird deadline:

There is a special rate for maximum 5 images for students and unwaged persons as well as for applicants from low-income economies.

The special fee is €15.00.

Please do not ask us about your eligibility or send us any proof because we trust your judgement. The special rate is simply for people who – for the reasons indicated above – would not be able to afford the standard fee.

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After the early bird deadline:

The special fee after the early bird deadline is €20.00.

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Submission rules and guidelines:

 

• Please add ph21.gallery@ph21gallery.com and reg@ph21gallery.com to your whitelist, so that our letters are not treated as spam by your e-mail client.

• The entry fee is not refundable.

• This call for entries is competitive; entrants are not guaranteed inclusion in the exhibition by submitting an entry. Depending on the number and the quality of the entries received, the work of an entrant may or may not be curated into the show.

• The selection of the curators is final.

• Please send in the entry fee first (see the payment option at the bottom of the page), and then submit your images by e-mail to submission@ph21gallery.com, indicating the theme of the exhibition in the subject line.

• Images must follow the following format: 8 bit JPEG; Adobe RGB or sRGB; longest dimension maximum 1280 pixels (preferred width for landscape orientation: 1000 pixels; preferred height for portrait orientation: 775 pixels); 72 dpi; maximum 1 MB.

• File names: lastname_title or lastname_title_number. File names of maximum 40 characters should only contain letters of the English alphabet and underscores. Please do not use spaces and foreign characters in the file names. Titles may be shortened (please avoid very long file names), and they should be given without spaces in the file name. No spaces in the file names, please. (The image titled A Little Cottage in the Rain by Maria Martínez would have this file name: Martinez_LittleCottage.jpg; the third untitled image by Huan Lee: Lee_Untitled_3.jpg; the second photograph of the series "Surface" by Lena Petrovich: Petrovich_Surface_2.jpg)

• In the body of your submission e-mail please include

  • a) your name;

  • b) your city and country (with state abbreviation if USA);

  • c) your website address (if you have one);

  • d) the exhibition theme;

  • e) titles of all included images with the corresponding file names (in case of a series, please number the images of the series, and indicate the title of the series, if it has one);

  • f) the actual or desired print size (in centimetres or inches) of each image.

  • g) the type of each image (all photo-based images are welcome): photograph, multiple exposure, photomontage, photogram, moving-image work, AI-generated photo-based image, etc.

• All photographers 18 years or older worldwide may enter the competition by submitting their own, original work.

• PH21 Gallery welcomes submissions from, and exhibits work of emerging and established photographers as well.

• Photographs entered to this call do not have to be editioned. If accepted to the exhibition, it still remains the choice of the photographer to edition the work (e.g.: "ed. 10") or to leave the work uneditioned ("open ed.").

• The exhibition copy will be an archival pigment print. However, photographers may also choose to indicate different print types if they offer their accepted work for sale.

• Photographs entered to the call do not have to be for sale.

• By entering, entrants automatically accept the conditions of the competition; they grant PH21 Gallery nonexclusive right to use and reproduce submitted photographs (with the name of the photographer and the title of the work indicated) for promotional (e.g.: website and Facebook page of the Gallery, catalogue) and exhibition purposes. No royalties or compensation will be paid for these purposes.

• All copyrights and ownership of the works are retained by the photographer.

• Entrants assume and accept all legal and financial responsibility for any infringement on the privacy rights or copyright of others, caused by creating or presenting their work in public. PH21 Galley retains the right to exclude from the competition entries that violate the conditions of the competition and ones that violate any human or privacy rights.

• Please add ph21.gallery@ph21gallery.com and reg@ph21gallery.com to your address book. Otherwise your mail client may treat our letters as spam.

 

 

When your work is selected for the exhibition:

 

Entrants selected for the exhibition will be asked to register for the exhibition and to provide a high-resolution TIFF (or JPEG) file for us to have their photograph printed for a standard exhibition printing and installation fee. Your exhibition registration payment includes the cost of the print and the cost of its installation, and the fee depends on the size of the print. For instance, for up to 40 centimetres or 15.75 inches (longest dimension) the matted exhibition print fee is €45.00. (Exhibiting photographers may also opt for shipping their own exhibit-ready prints.) 

 

Exhibition prints will be kept on file for a year for future promotion unless the photographer prefers some other arrangement. In case of a sale inquiry the photographer will be promptly contacted. PH21 Gallery commission is 25%. (Submitted photographs, however, do not have to be for sale, and exhibition prints will never be sold; they are for exhibition and promotion purposes only.)

 

PH21 Gallery archives all photography exhibitions electronically, allowing us to promote our exhibiting photographers to curators, collectors as well as the viewing public. Our website also functions as a virtual gallery site, and all photographs included in our exhibitions are published on the dedicated page of the exhibition.

 

Further information: ph21.gallery@ph21gallery.com

 

Please use the link below to pay your entry fee.

Please note that we have changed the payment method: from now on, you can pay by credit card.

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