Guest Room: Whitney Hubbs and Jermaine Francis

Guest Room is Der Greif's online exhibition format featuring open submissions curated by leading figures in contemporary photography. It is a format designed to foster collaboration, spark creative exchange, and amplify new voices in visual culture under a given theme. For this edition, Associate Director of Light Work Whitney Hubbs and lens-based artist and lecturer Jermaine Francis propose the theme "Photography Unbound”.

This Guest Room approaches the photographic medium as an unstable site of friction and a “conditional object” that refuses to sit still as bound by specific conditions. What happens when we actively sit with this instability, this fluid slippage? What happens if we shift our gaze away from the concentration on descriptive qualities of the medium and begin to see the image as what Elizabeth Edwards calls a “relational object,” one that is always in active dialogue with its surroundings?

Leaning  into the spirit of Édouard Glissant’s ‘Tout-Monde’, which embraces unpredictable openness and worldly complexity, we want to navigate the collisions and the messy complexities of the world we inhabit: the issue of representation, aesthetic strategies and the production of meaning. We want to engage with the materiality and spatial possibilities of the photographic medium embracing its textures, its vulnerability and its capacity for change, decay, and multiplicity. How can we use these  strategies to unlock forms of resistance, criticality, subversion, and transformation?

We invite artists exploring multidisciplinary approaches to lens-based practices to address a wide range of contemporary issues. We welcome works that utilize everything from performance, sculpture, and cameraless photography to screengrabs, the speculative, and the magical. This open call is an invitation to those who wish to challenge and expand the boundaries and potential of the medium.

Please note: Images which have been selected for a previous Der Greif opportunity are not eligible for re-submission. We want to support the broadest range of photographers possible and therefore encourage you to submit work that has not yet been selected by our past Guest Curators. Any images which do not comply with these terms will be removed from the selection process.

Why submit to Guest Room?

• Be discovered by experts in contemporary art and photography
• Get published in an online showcase on Der Greif alongside emerging artists from all over the world
• Win an online feedback session with the curators

Voluntary donation

Der Greif is a registered non-profit. In these challenging economic times – especially for arts organizations and artists – we are convinced to provide a vital platform for our community. If you're in the position to support this mission, we value your support.

Since launching Guest Room in January 2015, we've invited a broad range of professionals (gallerists, editors, curators) to create opportunities for artists to share their work and get it in front of an international network they might not have access to otherwise. We are more commited than ever to continue this work.

We suggest a voluntary 10€ donation to help us sustain these efforts. If you'd like to support us further, we also accept regular donations via our Raisely page.

If you're unable to contribute financially, please email voucher-guestroom@dergreif.org to receive a 50% or 100% discount code. Your artistic and financial contributions enable our continued growth.

About Whitney Hubbs

Whitney Hubbs is the Associate Director of Light Work in Syracuse, NY, and also serves as faculty for the Image Text MFA program at Cornell University and as a part-time instructor at Syracuse University. She is represented by M+B Gallery in Los Angeles and Situations Gallery in NYC. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally, and her work is included in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the California Museum of Photography. Additionally, Whitney's works have been featured or reviewed in the following publications: Artforum, Bomb Magazine, Frieze, CARLA, The New Yorker, Aperture, Art in America, Beauty Papers, and Charlotte Cotton’s “The Photograph as Contemporary Art.” 

About Jermaine Francis

Jermaine Francis is a lens-based artist and lecturer who has written for publications such as 1000 Words, Beauty Papers, and Contact Sheet. He has also co-curated “Notes on Native Sons” at Peckham 24 Photo and was part of the judging panel for this year's Kraszna-Kraus Book Awards. His work has been exhibited internationally at the International Center of Photography, New York; the National Portrait Gallery, London; Galerie Pcp, Paris; the Centre of British Photography, London; the Saatchi Gallery, London; the Camden Arts Centre, London; Sherbet Green, London; the Peckham 24 Photo Festival, Norwich; the Impression Gallery, Bradford; Photo London; and the Materia Gallery, Rome. His work is held in the collections of Autograph UK, the James Hyman Collection, and Lightwork in Syracuse, USA. 

About Der Greif Guest Room

Guest Room is a monthly online exhibition with open submissions curated in real-time by personalities from the international photography scene. Der Greif is an award-winning organization for contemporary photography. It is print-publication, online-publication, curatorial team and joint project all at once. Der Greif connects the digital and the analogue, exploring and expanding the borders and limits of image-distribution and -reception in the digital era.