Into Your Eyes: Photographic Portraiture in the Digital Era ends 7 October 2025

Deadline: 7 October 2025. This juried open call invites submissions of photographic portraits, to be shown in a virtual exhibition organized by LACP.

The term portrait is used here broadly, referencing images of groups, single humans and non-human beings. The image could be an expression of an emotion, a conceptual meditation on loved experience, or a documentarian effort.

As we collectively experience the alienation, isolation and loneliness brought about by our current digital era, portraits seem more pressing and relevant than ever. To look at one’s eyes in an image feels like an immediate invitation to connect, to explore, to be curious about others, to wonder about what the image reveals and what it could never disclose. It’s an ongoing call for empathy, for a relationship with those we will probably never meet, whose lives we, the viewers, will never experience.

Emanuel Levinas wrote about the ethical values we reveal in the world by encountering one’s face. Roland Barthes was fascinated by portraits from the past, and the idea that he is looking at eyes that looked at the world’s greats, or that he is looking at a person no longer living. Photographic portraits shorten the distance between the past and present, between us and those around us, and might help us see beyond ourselves, beyond our time, beyond our experience in the world.

Prizes:

1st Place winner will receive $1,000; 2nd Place winner will receive a $500 LACP gift card; 3rd Place winner will receive $250 LACP gift card. Honorable Mentions: Other artists will receive honorable mentions and have their work shown with the winners in a in-person exhibition at LACP Headquarters opening on August 21st, 2025.

Photo Contest Website: https://losangelescenterofphotography.submittable.com/submit/335121/into-your-eyes-photographic-portraiture-in-the-digital-era