Vision & Expression: The Art of Photography

The Art of Photography

A curated international photography exhibition

September 19 – October 13, 2026 @ PH21 Gallery Barcelona newsletter

Although photography initially emerged as a technological invention, it quickly evolved into an expressive artistic practice. Pictorialist photographs from the nineteenth century were crafted to resemble paintings, while proponents of straight photography in the early twentieth century aimed for a purely photographic approach to conveying meaning. Street photographers dedicated the medium to capturing fleeting moments, and in the latter part of the twentieth century, many photographers embraced staging and directing to employ photography as a means of artistic visual communication. Straight photography derives expressive meaning from the observed scene, while directorial, or staged photography involves creating a scene based on a preconceived notion. Art photography today encompasses various genres and creative practices, ranging from portraiture, landscape, and still life to staged, abstract, and conceptual photography. More recently, AI-generated photo-based images have also asserted their presence in the art photography scene. In this call, we invite contemporary photographers to demonstrate their understanding of photography as an expressive fine art practice in the twenty-first century.

PH21 Gallery invites photographers to submit their work for a group exhibition themed Vision & Expression: The Art of Photography. We welcome submissions from photographers interested in photography as an art form and looking for a venue to showcase their work to a broader international audience through the exposure provided by PH21 Gallery. The theme is broadly construed, and we encourage submissions from all artistic photographic genres and styles, including abstract compositions and AI-generated photo-based images (explicitly labelled as such). We are interested in exploring diverse and creative photographic interpretations of what photography as an art form might entail.

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

Submission deadlines

Early bird deadline: July 13, 2026
Final deadline: July 20, 2026