Tate Collective Open Call: Capturing Our World In Common

To celebrate A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography at Tate Modern, we’re inviting 16–25-year-olds to submit a photograph in response to the exhibition.

A World in Common brings together 36 artists from different generations who use photography to reimagine Africa’s place in the world. From the girl gangs of Morocco by Hassan Hajjaj to the dream-like Ethiopian landscapes by Aïda Muluneh, from the studios of 1960s Ghana to Sabelo Mlangeni’s portraits of South African queer communities, this exhibition explores what it means to work with contemporary African photography today.

Now over to you! We’d love to see your photographic responses to A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography and its key themes around inherited tradition, family portraits and imagined futures. How do these themes relate to your own experiences of African community and culture?

This opportunity is an open callout for 16-25s who are part of Tate Collective, our free to join membership scheme.

As the show centres around narratives of African photography, we strongly encourage responses from people in the African Diaspora.

Send us a photograph that best represents your interpretation of contemporary African photography.

Your photograph could be challenging colonial representations of Africa’s past and present or completely reimagining the continent’s future. It could be influenced by the town or community you’re surrounded by on a daily basis, or the more personal traditions that are treasured by you and your family.

Your photos don’t have to be new, so long as they fit the file size criteria. Check your file size to see if it fits our criteria below.

The 30 chosen photos will be displayed on billboards around London for two weeks in November.

We will pay a usage fee of £200 to each young person whose work is featured in the billboard.

We’ve chosen a few artworks on display in A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography to get you inspired. You’re also welcome to head to the show for inspo! Don’t forget, tickets are only £5 for Tate Collective!

Step 1:

Submit your photograph via email to collective@tate.org.uk

Step 2:

In the subject heading add: TC Open Call 2023 Your Name

For example: TC AWIC Open Call 2023 Cherise Jones

Step 3:

Attach your photo submission to the email. If your email is over 8MB in size, please use WeTransfer using the same address.

Please name your files in this style: Full Name - Title of photograph– AWIC callout

For example: Cherise Jones - Afro future - AWIC callout

We’d like to showcase and celebrate the work produced by young people, on a large scale, on billboards across London. Please make sure your submission is at least 381x254mm at 300 dpi or larger, in other words an image taken with at least a 14-megapixel camera (without cropping). We are unable to accept submissions that exceed a file size of 2GB. If you have any questions, please feel free to email us at collective@tate.org.uk.

Step 4:

Please include the following info in the body of your email:

• Your full name
• Your date of birth
• Your Tate Collective membership number

You must be a member of Tate Collective to take part in this open call.

• Your contact email address (if different from the one you’re emailing from)
• Your full address
• How you’d like your work to be credited (artist name, title of submission)
• A short description of your photo and how it fits into the theme of Contemporary African photography. Please also include where and when your photo was taken, plus what you used to take the photo (150 words max)
• Your social media handles (if you’d like us to @ you!)
• You must include the following statement at the end of your email submission:

The photo/s I have submitted, are all my work and I have all the necessary permissions.

This is important if your work features identifiable and recognizable people.

Deadline for submissions is 11.59am GMT on Tuesday 26 September 2023.

A panel, including members of Tate’s curatorial and design teams will choose a curated selection of entries to be displayed on billboards across London in November 2023. Check back here after the open call has closed for dates and locations.