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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Dear Objects
Photographs, Objects, and the Stories We Carry
A collaboration between SCAD Photography and guest mentor Charlene Lam, Founder of The Grief Gallery® and Creator of Curating Grief®, with the support of the Feinglos Fund and nonprofit partner PAUSE.
About the exhibition
Dear Objects is an exhibition exploring memory, objects, storytelling, and loss through photography. A photograph, article of clothing, letter, family heirloom, souvenir, key, or everyday belonging can contain traces of a person, relationship, identity, place, or moment in time. Photography has long served as a means of documentation and preservation, but it can also be a way of honoring, interpreting, questioning, and reimagining what remains after loss.
Developed in partnership with The Grief Gallery® and Curating Grief®, this exhibition invites photographers to consider the role images can play in making visible experiences that are often difficult to describe.
Students are encouraged to interpret the theme broadly. Loss may include the death of a loved one, but it may also involve changes in identity, family, home, relationships, community, culture, environment, health, dreams, or belonging.
Selected student works will be exhibited alongside a curated installation of meaningful objects and stories from The Grief Gallery®, creating a dialogue between photographs and objects, memory and materiality, absence and presence.
What we're looking for
All photographic approaches are welcome, including documentary, fine art, conceptual, staged, experimental, archival, and narrative work.
Eligibility
This call is open to:
- Students currently enrolled in a photography course
- Photography minors
- Photography majors
- Graduate photography students
- Students from both the Savannah and SCADnow campuses
Submission Guidelines
- Submit 2-5 photographic works for jury review.
- Submit files at the highest available resolution.
- Selected works will be printed and installed by the Photography Department.
- There is no cost to participate, and all exhibition production, printing, and installation logistics will be coordinated by the department.
- Title each file with the intended artwork title.
- Include your First and Last Name, and SCAD student email, in the submission prompt.
- If submitting a multi-image work intended to be displayed as a single piece, arrange all images into a single layout and submit the work as one piece.
- Exhibition work is for display only and is not for sale.
Submission Link
Submission Deadline: Friday, October 9, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. et
Exhibition dates: October 24-November 10, 2026
Location: Graham Scott Gallery, SCAD Savannah
Selection and notification
Work will be selected by Charlene Lam with SCAD Photography faculty and student organizers. Selected artists will be notified the week of Oct. 12.
Rights and permissions
You keep the copyright to your work. By submitting, you grant SCAD Photography, The Grief Gallery®, and project partners permission to exhibit selected work and to reproduce it in exhibition documentation and promotion, with credit. Any further use, such as a publication or future exhibition, will require your separate consent.
Questions
Contact photography department chair, Josh Jalbert, jjalbert@scad.edu
About The Grief Gallery and Curating Grief
The Grief Gallery® is a participatory arts project founded by grief coach, author, and curator Charlene Lam that explores grief through meaningful objects, stories, and shared witnessing. https://www.thegriefgallery.com/
Curating Grief® is Charlene’s creative, object-centered approach to engaging with loss through objects, stories, memory, interpretation, and intentional choice. Rather than treating grief as something to resolve, Curating Grief centers agency, meaning-making, and how we choose to carry our stories forward. https://curatinggrief.com/
Organized by SCAD Photography in collaboration with Charlene Lam, Founder of The Grief Gallery® and Creator of Curating Grief®, with support from the Feinglos Fund and nonprofit partner PAUSE.
