WOMEN STREET PHOTOGRAPHERS

women street photographers annual exhibition CALL

NEW YORK CITY, APRIL 9-19, 2027

open to women and non-binary photographers

Guest judgeS:

KATHY RYAN, Former Director of Photography, The New York Times Magazine

SARAH MEISTER, Executive Director, Aperture

SEHIN TEWABE, Photographer & Co-Founder, Artawi Gallery

Curator:

Gulnara lyabib (founder of wsp)

AWARDS:

– 70 Women and non-binary Street Photographers will show their work at the Artspace PS109 gallery, April 10-20

Four cash grants of US$1000 each, sponsored by Leica Camera USA

– Publication on social media with over 200,000 followers

– Dedicated page on www.womenstreetphotographers.com

The fees:

-This is a juried exhibition. Entries fee is $15.00 per photo.

– There will be no additional or hidden cost to photographers chosen for the exhibitions. The exhibition will cover all printing and framing cost.

- No refunds will be made but please know your fee helps to support Women Street Photographers around the world. Thank you!

- Finalists will be sent a new form with an agreement detailing the terms.

DEADLINE IS NOVEMBER 16, 2026, 11:59PM IN NEW YORK

70 FINALISTS WILL BE ANNOUNCED ON OR AROUND december 20 on @womenstreetphotographers

SUBMISSION FORM

FREE ENTRY

To promote and empower photographers who cannot afford the entry fee (New York City residents excluded), or if you are unable to pay by credit card because of restrictions in countries affected by U.S. embargo, you may request up to two free entries. Please email hello@womenstreetphotographers.com to receive a fee waiver form and briefly explain your reason.

GUEST JUDGES:

The longtime director of photography at The New York Times Magazine, Kathy Ryan has been a pioneer of combining fine art photography with photojournalism. She has worked with the world's best photographers across all genres of photography. She regularly brought new talent into The Magazine's pages. She left The Times after 39 years to focus on her own artwork, curating exhibitions, teaching a course at Yale, and speaking engagements.

In 2011, Ryan edited The New York Times Magazine Photographs, a landmark book published by Aperture. An accompanying exhibition, curated by Ryan and Lesley Martin opened at the Rencontres d’Arles in 2012, traveled to FOAM Museum in Amsterdam, Palau Robert in Barcelona, Universidad Catolica in Santiago and ended its run at the Aperture Gallery in New York City.

Office Romance, a book of Ryan’s photographs featuring her colleagues and the beauty and poetry to be found in the radiant light in the New York Times building was published by Aperture in 2014. This work has been exhibited in Europe and the U.S. All of Ryan’s photography is done with the iPhone.

Ryan has contributed essays and Q&A’s to books by photographers Lee Friedlander, Christopher Payne, Seydou Keïta, Paolo Pellegrin, Lynsey Addario, Jack Davison and Brian Finke. She was the picture editor of Feeling the Spirit by Chester Higgins.

The Magazine's photography and videos have been recognized with numerous awards. Ryan was awarded the Dr. Erich Salomon Prize from the German Photographic Society in September 2025. Ryan was a recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the Griffin Museum of Photography in 2007; the Royal Photographic Society’s annual award for Outstanding Service to Photography in 2012; the Vision Award at the Center for Photography at Woodstock in 2014; and the Outstanding Contribution to Photography recognition from Creative Review in 2016. Ryan has been recognized as Photo Editor of the Year by the Lucie Awards and Visa Pour l’Image. Ryan won two Emmy’s for videos she produced for The New York Times Magazine’s Great Performers series. Kathy was the International Center of Photography’s Spotlight honoree in 2024.

@kathyryan

Photo credit: Inez & Vinoodh

Sarah Meister is executive director. She joined Aperture in May 2021, following more than twenty-five years at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. While leading efforts to move Aperture to a permanent home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Sarah has encouraged renewed attention to Aperture’s storied backlist, including a new edition of Robert Frank’s The Americans (2024).

As a curator, Sarah’s exhibitions include Carrie Mae Weems: The Heart of the Matter (2025); Fotoclubismo: Brazilian Modernist Photography, 1946–1964 (2021); Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures (2020); From Bauhaus to Buenos Aires: Grete Stern and Horacio Coppola (cocurator, 2015); and Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light (2013). Her publications also consider Luigi Ghirri (2020), Gordon Parks (2020), Frances Benjamin Johnston (2019), Dorothea Lange (2018), New Documents, the 1967 MoMA exhibition (2017), Josef Albers (2016), and the three-volume series Photography at MoMA (with Quentin Bajac et al., 2015, 2016, 2017), among others.

She is the founder and host of the Aperture PhotoBook Club, was lead instructor for Seeing Through Photographs (Coursera), and codirected the August Sander Project (MoMA/Columbia University). Sarah holds a BA in art history from Princeton University, New Jersey.

@thesarahmeister

Sehin Tewabe is an Ethiopian photographer and gallerist based in Addis Ababa. Working across street, documentary, and portrait photography, her practice is rooted in observation, natural light, and everyday life, with a focus on people, place, and the overlooked moments that shape everyday experience.

She began photographing as a teenager and has developed her practice over the past decade, documenting life in Ethiopia and beyond. Her work has been exhibited locally and internationally, including at Addis Foto Fest and exhibitions in Germany.

In 2024, Sehin was selected as the winner of the Women Street Photographers NYC Artist Residency, and completed the residency in 2025. Her solo residency work was exhibited in New York as part of the annual Women Street Photographers Festival. Later she developed Addis Eyes in New York, a body of work exploring the city through the perspective of an Ethiopian photographer.

She is also the co-founder of Artawi Gallery, Ethiopia’s first photography-focused artist-run spaces, founded in Addis Ababa in 2023. Established to create greater visibility and opportunities for photography in Ethiopia, Artawi has become an important platform for photographers and contemporary artists, presenting exhibitions and fostering a growing community around photography.

@sehintewabe

@artawigallery

WSP EXHIBITION CURATOR

Gulnara Lyabib Samoilova is a Tatar-born American photographer, author, curator, and founder of Women Street Photographers. With 45 years of combined experience as a documentary and street photographer, artist, darkroom printer, photojournalist, and photo editor, Gulnara has organized and curated more than 30 exhibitions across four continents, including the first two Women Street Photographers and Leica Women Foto Project Summits in New York City. She serves as the curator and designer of the annual Women Street Photographers Exhibition in New York City.

In addition to her curatorial work, Gulnara is an inspirational speaker, guest judge (LensCulture, Leica Women Foto Project, Lucie Photo Book Prize, UNESCO), portfolio reviewer (Les Rencontres d’Arles, PhotoNOLA), and Leica Oscar Barnack Award nominator.

A former Associated Press photojournalist, she received international recognition for her iconic photographs of September 11, including first prize in the World Press Photo competition and a Pulitzer Prize nomination by the AP. Her work is held in major collections such as the Museum of the City of New York, the New York Public Library, the New-York Historical Society, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Gulnara, a 1994 graduate of the International Center of Photography, lives and works in New York City.

www.gulnara.com
@gulnara.samoilova

SUBMISSION FORM

ABOUT WOMEN STREET PHOTOGRAPHERS

Founded in 2017 by photographer Gulnara Lyabib Samoilova, Women Street Photographers is a global community dedicated to supporting and amplifying the work of women photographers, both professional and amateur alike. It embraces artists of all races, ethnicities, creeds, generations, abilities, and gender identities, both online and in person.

With an inclusive and non-traditional approach, WSP expands the boundaries of street photography by showcasing diverse perspectives from around the world. Its platforms include the official website www.womenstreetphotographers.com, social platforms (Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Irys), a festival in New York City, traveling exhibitions, an Artist Residency, and the best-selling book Women Street Photographers (Prestel, 2021).

ABOUT ARTSPACE PS109

http://www.artspace.org/our-places/el-barrio-s-artspace-ps109

El Barrio’s Artspace PS109 is a community-driven project which has transformed an abandoned public school building in East Harlem into an arts facility with 89 units of affordable live/work housing for artists and their families and 10,000 square feet of complementary space for arts organizations.

PS109 is an impressive building. Designed by Charles B.J. Snyder and completed in 1898, this structure is five stories tall with a steeply pitched roof. Exterior details include several copper-clad cupolas and a wealth of decorative terra cotta.

PS109 contains 89 units of affordable live/work housing for artists and their families with 3,000 square feet available for a resident gallery in addition to 10,000 square feet of non-residential space for arts and cultural organizations on the ground floor and lower level.

ABOUT ARTSPACE

http://www.artspace.org/

Artspace is non-profit organization that uses the tools of real estate development to create affordable, appropriate places where artists can live and work. They consistently develop these projects in ways that also support more stable, healthy communities anchored in existing assets. Because Artspace owns each of the projects it develops, they are able to ensure that they remain affordable and accessible to artists in perpetuity. Over the last three decades, Artspace has led an accelerating national movement of artist-led community transformation. With headquarters in Minneapolis and offices in Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, Seattle and Washington D.C., Artspace is America’s leading developer of arts facilities and has served as a consultant to hundreds of communities and arts organizations nationwide.