Silver Eye

Silver Eye Center for Photography announces the Call for Entries for Fellowship 27 our annual photography open call.

About Fellowship

Fellowship is Silver Eye’s program for recognizing exceptionally talented artists working with photography, particularly those who have not yet received significant recognition or support. We invite artists to submit recent and current work that explores new directions in contemporary photography. Each year, trusted jurors bring fresh perspectives as valued peers within the larger photography community. The resulting Fellowship exhibition offers selected artists an opportunity to further develop their creative vision through curatorial guidance, exhibition, and production support.

Awards

Fellowship 27 includes the International Fellowship Award, which recognizes a photographer from anywhere in the world, and the Keystone Award which recognizes an exceptional photographer living or making work in Pennsylvania. Two Honorable Mentions will be selected in each category.

All awardees and honorable mentions will be included in the Fellowship 27 exhibition in May 2027. They will receive curatorial support to develop the exhibition, a cash prize, and free production support from the Lab @ Silver Eye.

International Fellowship Award: $1,000 prize
Keystone Award: $1,000 prize
Honorable Mentions: $500 prizes

This year’s awards will be juried by artist and educator Harlan Bozeman and art historian and educator Paula Kupfer.

The deadline for submissions is NOV 19 2026, NOON ET.

About the Jurors

Harlan Bozeman is an artist and educator from Central Arkansas. His research-driven practice confronts the erasure of Black legacies, examining how these histories shape identity and personhood. Bozeman’s earlier work focuses on the Gullah Sea Island communities, particularly Wadmalaw Island, where his family is from, exploring narratives that preserve and sustain their cultural significance. His current projects blend photography, collage, and archival research to interrogate historical omissions and distortions, with a specific focus on the region of Elaine, Arkansas.

Dr. Paula V. Kupfer is an art historian, writer, and curator from Panama, specializing in the history of photography in the Americas. She recently contributed to Great Women Photographers (2026), Black Photojournalism (2025), and What They Saw: Historical Photobooks by Women, 1843-1999 (2021), winner of the 2022 Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award. A former managing editor of Aperture and photo editor at California Sunday Magazine, she is a teaching assistant professor of art history at the University of Pittsburgh and is based in Pittsburgh.

Eligibility Notice

Photographers who have been a featured artist in a solo or group exhibition (of up to eight artists) at Silver Eye within the last five years (January 1, 2022–December 31, 2026) are not eligible to apply to Fellowship.

Additionally, if an artist was previously featured in an exhibition at Silver Eye before 2022, their submitted work must represent a significant creative departure from work previously submitted to or shown by Silver Eye.

What to Enter

-Work sample of twenty images or less
-One page Artist's Statement in PDF format
-One page Artist bio and/or CV in PDF format
-One page checklist that includes the file number, title, and date of all submitted images.

You may submit up to 20 images, and up to a total of 30MB. Image files should be JPGs or a single PDF file. Images files must be titled with the image number (01-20) and the artists last name. For example: 02_smith.jpg

How to enter

Submit using our online entry form below!

Full Guidelines/Eligibility/Terms & Conditions/FAQs

Fellowship Fee: $40 for one submission of up to 20 images

Fees go toward covering our administrative costs for running the competition and presenting the related exhibitions.

Deadline: NOV 19, 2026, NOON EST

If you cannot find answers to your questions on the entry form, or at the Full Guidelines/Eligibility/Terms & Conditions/FAQs above, you can email Leo Hsu, Executive Director, at leo@silvereye.org

Previous Winners

Fellowship 26
International Fellowship Award, Jamie Ho
Keystone Award, Javier Griffey

Fellowship 25
International Fellowship Award, Ramona Jingru Wang
Keystone Award, Sobia Ahmad

Fellowship 24
International Fellowship Award, William Camargo
International Fellowship Award, Anthony Francis
Keystone Award, Vikesh Kapoor

Fellowship 23
International Fellowship Award, Samantha Box
Keystone Award, Dominick McDuffie

Fellowship 22
International Fellowship Award, Carla Liesching
Keystone Award, Eva Alcántara

Fellowship 21
International Fellowship Award, Sasha Phyars-Burgess
Keystone Award, J Houston and Aleem Hurst

Fellowship 20
International Fellowship Award, Rory Doyle
Keystone Award, Erik Hagen

Fellowship 19
International Fellowship Award, Tim Carpenter
Keystone Award, Rebecca Arthur

Fellowship 18
International Fellowship Award, Soohyun Kim
Keystone Award, Tamsen Wojtanowski

Fellowship 17
International Fellowship Award, Kris Sanford
Keystone Award, Francis Crisafio

Fellowship 16
International Fellowship Award, Ka-Man Tse
Keystone Award, Aaron Blum

Fellowship 15
International Fellowship Award, Christopher Meerdo
Keystone Award, Matthew Conboy