The Pasadena Photography Arts
PHOTO AWARD 2025

$2000 Cash Prize!

DEADLINE: APRIL 7, 2025

IMPORTANT NOTE:
If you have been impacted by the devastating fires across Los Angeles, we are able to waive the application fee for a select number of candidates. Please email us directly at
pasadenaphotoarts@gmail.com for more information.

Open Theme: Excellence in Contemporary Photography

“To me photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place. I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them."

Eliot Erwitt

“Brassai showed me that it was possible to find something significant in photographing subjects in everyday life doing ordinary things by interpreting them in your own way and with your own personal vision.”

Louis Sterner, 1922-2016 

Pasadena Photography Arts is pleased to announce an open call for our PPA Photo Award 2025: Excellence in Contemporary Photography (Open Theme). This is an annual award for both emerging and professional photographers with residence in the United States. *Photographer must have a US bank account to complete application.

The winning photographer will receive a $2,000 cash prize, a published interview on our website, a feature on Lenscratch.com, and a virtual hosted artist talk.

The PPA Photo Award 2025 is accepting entries December 20th, 2024 through April 7th, 2025. Results will be publicly announced August 22nd, 2025. Photographers are invited to submit cohesive bodies of work between 10 - 20 images with an accompanying statement. Analogue, digital, portrait, abstract, mixed-media, documentary, street photography, conceptual, still-life photography, landscape, alternative photography, cell phone photography is acceptable.  No fully generated AI images allowed, however, AI as an editing tool is permissible. 

The jury panel is composed of Pasadena Photography Arts Advisors alongside esteemed guest juror Eve Schillo, Associate Curator at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), for the final round decision. Entries will be judged on the basis of creativity, originality, quality, and responsiveness to the call.

About Guest Juror Eve Schillo

Associate Curator
Wallis Annenberg Photography Dept.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

Eve Schillo curates exhibitions that span photographic history and appear in galleries dedicated to American, Latin American, Modern, Contemporary, and Japanese Art, as well as those devoted to photography. Recent projects include an exhibition celebrating California photography, Golden Hour (2021-22); In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe (2021); and Mariana Yampolsky (2018). Before You Now: Capturing the Self in Portraiture is touring to several Southern California venues (through August 2025) and also on view, Nature on Notice: Contemporary Art and Ecology (a PST ART exhibit, through August 2025). Areas of interest include experimental processes, time-based media, Central and South American makers, and of course, California and The West.

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