Women at Work

Juror: Amy Toensing
Exhibition prints due: October 24, 2019
Gallery exhibition: November 7 – November 30, 2019

Juror's Statement

It was such a pleasure to look at so many images that celebrate women all over the world. Contributors saw beautiful light and vibrant color and celebrated strength and vulnerability.

The images that resonated with me were the ones that didn’t just document a specific woman doing a specific task but instead imparted a feeling about that task and the woman pictured. My selections leaned toward intimacy and I was most excited when the photographer captured something with a unique viewpoint or voice.

    – Amy Toensing

Call for Entries

For this exhibition, we seek images that celebrate women's labor, broadly defined. The goal is to paint a full and complex picture of the work performed by women. Photographers are encouraged to apply their own experience and draw upon their own relationships.

All capture and processing methods are welcome.

We are very pleased that Amy Toensing will curate this exhibit. She will select up to 35 images for exhibition in the Middlebury, Vermont gallery, and another 35 images for the Online gallery. All 70 images will appear in the exhibit catalog. While the Gallery exhibit is open, the Online selections will be projected in a continuous loop in the gallery.

Information about our printing service and free matting and framing here.

About the Juror

Amy Toensing is a photojournalist and filmmaker committed to telling stories with sensitivity and depth and known for her intimate stories about the lives of ordinary people. 

Toensing has been a regular contributor to National Geographic magazine for almost two decades. She has photographed cultures around the world including the last cave dwelling tribe of Papua New Guinea, remote Aboriginal Australia, the Maori of New Zealand, and the Kingdom of Tonga. She has also covered issues such as food insecurity in the United States, the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, and Muslim women living in Western culture. She is currently working on her sixteenth feature story for National Geographic magazine on how conservation projects impact surrounding culture and community.

Toensing has co-directed short documentary films about urban refugee children in Nairobi and the marginalization of widows in Uganda.

Toensing’s work has been exhibited throughout the world and recognized with numerous awards, including two solo exhibits at Visa Pour L’image, Festival of the Photograph in Perpignan France (2012 + 2017). Her work has also appeared in Smithsonian, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Time Magazine, and National Geographic Traveler. One of her Australian outback photographs was chosen as one of National Geographic magazine’s all time, 50 Best Photos. Toensing’s work is currently included in the group exhibit Women of Vision celebrating National Geographic magazine’s female photographers. 

Toensing began her professional career in 1994 as a staff photographer at her New Hampshire hometown paper, The Valley News. She then worked for The New York Times Washington D.C. bureau covering the White House and Capitol Hill during the Clinton administration. In 1998, Toensing left D.C. to obtain her Master’s Degree from Ohio University, School of Visual Communication. 

In addition to her photojournalism and film work, Toensing teaches photography to kids and young adults in underserved communities, including Burmese refugees in Baltimore, young photojournalist in Islamabad, Pakistan and Syrian refugee children in Jordan. Currently, she is a professor of Visual Storytelling at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University

amytoensing.com