ABSENCE: Photography Open Call

What has been lost, displaced, or erased in our region? What has been promised but never materialised? And what are the visible traces that have been left behind? What kind of voids can be seen and how do people, animals, or plants live in and around these voids?

Images could address:

• Architectural absences: demolition sites, vacant buildings, urban ruins, “ghost signs”
• Social absences: displaced communities, abandoned public spaces
• Economic absences: shuttered shops, post-industrial landscapes, evidence of disinvestment
• Temporal absences: traces of historic (or future) social worlds
• Ecological absences: a lack or loss of green spaces and biodiversity

Open to all photographers aged 18 and above, professional and amateur. Images must be your own and feature places within the Liverpool City Region. 

A large selection of submitted images will be displayed on a digital screen throughout an exhibition at Stable Gallery in St George’s Hall from 5 June – 11 July 2026. Photographers will also be invited to the private view launch event of the exhibition. 5 images will be exhibited in print and photographers will be rewarded with a £50 voucher for the Open Eye Gallery book shop. 

The exhibition is curated by sociologists Dr Maike Pötschulat (Liverpool John Moores University) and Dr Laura Harris (University of Southampton) and developed in partnership with Open Eye Gallery.