Organizer Information
TCG Gallery is an independent online photography gallery based in New York City, USA, dedicated to presenting curated exhibitions, artist features, and international open calls for photographers and lens-based artists. Originally established as The Chateau Gallery in Louisville, Kentucky, the organization has evolved into a fully online platform that focuses on increasing the visibility of both emerging and established photographers through professionally curated digital exhibitions and permanent online archives.
The gallery emphasizes accessibility by welcoming artists from around the world regardless of their exhibition history or geographic location. Through its online exhibitions, website archive, email newsletters, and social media promotion, TCG Gallery provides artists with long-term exposure beyond the exhibition period. The gallery follows a curator-led selection process that prioritizes artistic quality, originality, and thematic relevance rather than an artist's résumé or previous achievements, using blind review whenever possible to ensure fairness.
Title & Description
Memory: What Remains – International Photography Open Call
Memory: What Remains is an international photography open call organized by TCG Gallery that explores the complex relationship between photography and memory. The exhibition invites photographers and lens-based artists from around the world to submit work that reflects on remembrance, preservation, loss, history, identity, and the traces left behind by people, places, and experiences.
Photography has always served as both a documentary medium and a vessel for remembrance. While photographs preserve moments that might otherwise disappear, memory itself is fluid—constantly changing, fading, resurfacing, and being reconstructed over time. This exhibition seeks artworks that investigate this tension between permanence and impermanence, asking artists to consider what remains after time has passed.
The theme may be interpreted in numerous ways, including personal memories, family histories, cultural heritage, collective memory, nostalgia, migration, identity, archives, abandoned places, domestic spaces, landscapes, rituals, grief, aging, architecture, and imagined or reconstructed memories. Literal interpretations are not required; conceptual and experimental approaches are equally encouraged.
Artists may submit up to three original photographic works, either as individual images or as part of a cohesive series. Approximately 35 images will be selected for inclusion in a professionally curated online exhibition running throughout September 2026, with all selected works also becoming part of TCG Gallery's permanent online archive.
The exhibition welcomes a broad range of photographic practices, including documentary photography, fine art photography, conceptual work, experimental imagery, analogue photography, digital photography, alternative photographic processes, and mixed-media photographic works.
Categories
- Photography
- Fine Art Photography
- Documentary Photography
- Conceptual Photography
- Experimental Photography
- Lens-Based Art
- Alternative Process Photography
- Mixed Media Photography
- Visual Arts
Eligibility
The open call is international and welcomes submissions from photographers and visual artists worldwide. Applicants must:
- Be 18 years of age or older
- Submit original artwork created by themselves
- Own all rights to submitted images
- Ensure that submitted work does not infringe copyright, privacy, publicity, or third-party rights
Eligible media include:
- Digital photography
- Film photography
- Alternative photographic processes
- Documentary photography
- Fine art photography
- Conceptual photography
- Experimental photography
- Mixed-media photographic works
Both single photographs and cohesive photographic series are accepted.
Please note that artworks created by or substantially altered using Artificial Intelligence (AI) are not eligible, unless explicitly permitted in a future TCG Gallery call.
Because of applicable United States legal and financial regulations, TCG Gallery cannot accept submissions from locations subject to U.S. sanctions or payment-processing restrictions.
Program Benefits & Awards
- Inclusion in the curated online exhibition
- Permanent inclusion in the TCG Gallery online exhibition archive after the exhibition closes
- Professional presentation of artwork with artist name, title, medium, dimensions, and sale information (when provided)
- Promotion through TCG Gallery's official website
- Exposure via the gallery's email newsletter
- Social media promotion
- Artist credit in exhibition and promotional materials whenever feasible
- Opportunity to receive sales inquiries from collectors
- Optional participation in artwork sales
Artists may choose whether or not to offer their works for sale.
For artworks sold through TCG Gallery, the gallery retains a 30% commission, while artists receive the remaining proceeds.
Application Fee
- Entry Fee: USD $15
- Covers submission of up to three images
- Artists may submit multiple entries by paying additional entry fees.
Fee Waivers
TCG Gallery offers fee waivers for artists experiencing financial hardship. Waivers operate on an honor system, and artists should contact the gallery before submitting to request one.
How to Apply?
Online Application
Key Dates
- Application Deadline: 20 August 2026
- Artist Notification: 25 August 2026
- Online Exhibition: 1 September – 30 September 2026
Location
TCG Gallery, New York City, United States.
Additional Details
- Approximately 35 images will be selected.
- Selection is based on image quality, originality, thematic relevance, and overall exhibition cohesion.
- Blind review is used whenever possible to ensure fairness.
- Image descriptions are optional but recommended to provide additional context.
- There are no restrictions on production year or print size.
- Submitted works may remain on file for up to one year for administrative purposes or consideration for future TCG Gallery opportunities.
- Artists retain full copyright ownership of their work.
- By submitting, artists grant TCG Gallery a non-exclusive license to reproduce submitted images for jurying, exhibition display, archival purposes, and promotional activities related to the exhibition.
- Artists may request removal of their work from future promotional use by contacting the gallery in writing.
- Works listed for sale should include print dimensions, while unavailable works can be marked as NFS (Not For Sale).
- Entry fees support exhibition production, administration, web hosting, and promotional activities.