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Finding Joy
Prints of most of these images are available for purchase. Please inquire.
All photographs are the copyright of the individual artists and may not be reproduced without their permission.
Juror's Statement
Artists, thank you for sharing your delightful work with me during this strange and uncertain time. I applaud PhotoPlace Gallery for hosting such a timely call, as seeing and appreciating truly joyful imagery can help heal our hearts and strengthen our collective spirit. It was personally uplifting to review hundreds and hundreds of photographs that were created with the intent to elicit a smile and bring some form of happiness to the viewer.
I was particularly struck by images that appeared authentically joyful, rather than staged for the camera—summoning giddy memories from childhood or recalling the loving embrace of someone special or experiencing that exhilarating sense of boundless freedom or merely enjoying one of life’s many simple pleasures. For me, these photographic moments captured a tangible and almost contagious feeling of bliss, not just happy subjects. At the same time, I was surprisingly moved by the numerous quiet and unexpected, yet playful, interpretations on the theme of joy. Ultimately, I hope this exhibition serves as a visual reminder to all that we must always try to seek out and hold onto the “happy” in life.
Call for Entries
In these dark days, finding those things that bring us joy is particularly difficult, and never more important. Finding and sharing expressions of joy brings comfort to us all.
So please, make new photographs, or dig through your archives and share those moments of joy with a world that could surely use seeing them as well.
All capture and post processes welcome.
We are very pleased that Amy Holmes George will jury this exhibition. Amy will select 40 images for exhibition in our Middlebury, Vermont gallery and another 50 for our Online Gallery. All 90 images will be reproduced in the exhibition catalog.
Information about our printing service and free matting and framing here.
Click to enlarge
About the Juror
Amy Holmes George is a fine art photographer and a past Executive Director of Texas Photographic Society (2013-2018). As a former tenured professor of photography and digital media at Stephen F. Austin State University, Amy has also held teaching appointments at Collin College, Baylor University and University of North Texas. Amy is a recent member of the National Board of Directors of the Society for Photographic Education (2013-2017) and a 2008 Fulbright grant recipient. She earned an MFA in photography from Clemson University and a BFA cum laude in photography and graphic design from Miami University.
Exhibited widely throughout the U.S. as well as in Italy, England, France and China, Amy's work has been featured in over one hundred exhibitions and is housed in several permanent collections, including The Getty, The Kinsey Institute and the Fratelli Alinari Museum in Florence, Italy. Her work has been published in a variety of texts, including the third edition of The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes [Christopher James, 2015]; Gum Printing and other Amazing Contact Printing Processes [Christina Z. Anderson, 2013]; and the fifth edition of Exploring Color Photography: From Film to Pixels [Robert Hirsch, 2010].
Visit her website here.