Head On Photo Festival is Australia’s leading international photographic event 

We are looking for diverse and engaging, quality work across still photography, multi-media and video art.  We welcome applications from individual artists, curators, groups and exhibition spaces/galleries, Austrailan and international. Work can be recent or not - are you sitting on a treasure trove of past images?

We believe all photo-artists need a fair chance to show their work; proposals submitted through our submission process is judged without the artists’ names or pedigrees, so they stand on their merit alone.

After the selection panel reviews the submissions, we will invite successful applicants to exhibit during Head On Photo Festival.

SUBMISSIONS for Head On Photo Festival 2021 now CLOSED

Next open call - Head On Photo Awards - 1 May 2021

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The 2021 Festival will take place in Sydney during November and will include outstanding international and Australian artists both emerging and well known.

Head On Photo Festival is a leading international photography festival. Our reputation is based upon our belief that every photo artist deserves a fair chance to show their work. This philosophy has allowed us to be first to show quality work that breaks the mould and exhibit all genres of photography by artists at all career stages.

Our team works all year round to create opportunities for your work to be seen - many leading industry professionals seeking new and emerging talents follow what we do. Many of our artists go on to exhibit their work at other photo festivals around the world.

This year's Festival will be a hybrid of online and physical exhibitions and events. We preempt any changes in health and travel advice with tried and tested strategies in place to ensure that all exhibitions will have not only viability but also visibilty. We can and will pivot our Festival program online. In 2020 we were the first photo festival in the world to go entirely online: 13,000 people participated in our online workshops and talks, and over 80,000 visited our website and online exhibitons.

The Festival is also a great opportunity to experience the process of exhibiting your work, meeting other artists and creative professionals and being part of an internationally recognized event.

All exhibitors receive the following benefits:

- Inclusion in the Festival, an internationally recognised festival that puts the spotlight on photography, attracting extensive publicity through a variety of promotional channels

- Access to Head On’s infrastructure built over 16 years

- Dedicated webpage for each exhibition on www.headon.com.au (also available post-festival)

- Inclusion in a widely-distributed printed Festival catalogue

- Access to premium service providers at discounted fees

- Invitation to join Head On Photo Festival exhibitors on-line community

- Head On help desk

- Featured/Head On Curated exhibitors gain additional benefits.