Louisville

Chiaroscuro

Darkness, shadow, and space have the power to communicate as much as light and color, but we can often overlook them in our exploration of the captured image. The essence of a photograph and other figurative artworks is a harmony of brightness, contrast, highlights, and shadows. What can the mind's eye see outside the realm of luminosity and perceive in its absence? What is made evident or alluded to by being concealed? Chiaroscuro is an international juried group exhibition open to photographers ages 18 years and older. All black and white, color, conventional and non-traditional photographic and digital post-production processes are welcome for submission.

The Captured Image

The Captured Image is an international call for all forms of photographic art. This exhibition has no overarching theme save the light which traverses the ether, and begets a photograph, "the captured image." All genres of photography, black & white, color, traditional and non-traditional, and digital post-production photographic processes are welcome for submission.

Still II: An Elaboration on the Inanimate

The Chateau Gallery’s second annual still life exhibition. From ancient Greco-Roman artworks to Dutch vanitas paintings, still life has permeated art history for ages. Show us your most inimitable or transformative scenes of inanimate objects. What contemporary elaborations do you add to this lasting genre of imagery? Between wilting flowers and bowls of oranges, what do you bring to the table?

The Absurd

While the word is currently used to refer to a kind of dry, ironic situation, The Absurd has a rich philosophical tradition most closely associated with the writings of Albert Camus. What are we to do with the question of life’s meaning, especially in the face of its persistent unanswerability? Camus says that “one must imagine Sisyphus happy,” but this is no simple task. In modern times, it seems we can find countless echoes of the loop Sisyphus is stuck in, from the eternal scroll of social media to the endless stream of new variants and vaccines; how do you access the repetitions of our lives where meaning escapes our grasp, and The Absurd is all that remains?

The Art of Street Photography

Street photography is the most contentious genre of photography. The captured image presents us with a glimpse of the ordinary and achievements of everyday life. The narrative nevertheless seems to repeat itself, year after year. We challenge you to examine and redefine conventional street photography. Potential subjects include but are not limited to architecture, candid, documentary, fashion, photojournalism, portraiture, still life, and urbanism. How far are you willing to go to get your best shot?

The Uncanny

When the familiar becomes unfamiliar, we call it uncanny. That is to say, when something almost satisfies our brain’s search for human likeness, but falls short by a small margin, we experience a characteristic sense of unease at the sight of it. This is our understanding of what it is about realistic androids and almost-perfect-but-not-quite CGI that makes our skin crawl, and it stems from Freudian theory surrounding the German word “unheimlich.” Freud tells us that the unheimlich, or unhomely, is our experience when confronted with something that is like home to us, but is made wrong somehow. How do you incorporate the unheimlich, or uncanny, into your artwork?

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