The Big Picture
Texas Photographic Society is pleased to announce The Big Picture, a themed juried exhibition exploring the power of photographic scale. We invite submissions of images that translate compellingly to large-format presentation. While subject matter is open, artists are encouraged to consider ideas of monumentality, intimacy through detail, excess, immersion, and presence. This exhibition is made possible by the sponsorship of our partners in Fort Worth Camera + the Print Refinery, and Red River Paper.
The Big Picture will be exhibited at the Arlington Museum of Art in Arlington, Texas. In response to the expansive scale of the museum’s main gallery, selected photographs will be printed at approximately 40 inches wide to create a visually immersive viewing experience. Due to the generous sponsorship of Fort Worth Camera + the Print Refinery, and Red River Paper, all accepted works will be professionally printed at large scale at no cost to the artist.
The Big Picture will open at the Arlington Museum of Art in Arlington, Texas, on August 7th, 2026 and will continue through November 1st, 2026. An opening reception with the juror will be on August 7th, 2026, 5-7PM.
This exhibition will be juried by Dornith Doherty, 2012 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and internationally known photographer and educator. Entries due 7/1/26.
.........................................................................
TIMELINE
May 21st, 2026 - Call for Entries opens
July 1st, 2026 - Deadline for Entry (11:59 p.m. Central Time)
July 8th, 2026 - Selections Announced
August 7th, 2026 - Exhibition Opening, Special Reception 5-7pm
November 1st, 2026 - Exhibition Closes
ENTRY FEE and TPS MEMBERSHIP
All entries are processed through the CaFE submission site. The entry fee for current TPS Members is $30 for 5 images, plus $5 for each additional image. The Non-Member entry fee is $40 for 5 images, plus $5 for each additional image. You do not have to be a member of TPS to enter. However, if you enter the competition and join TPS or renew as a member at the same time, you can pay the reduced current TPS Member entry fee of $30.
You may enter up to 12 images.
TPS Member Benefits include member feature opportunities via our Members' Gallery, Member Spotlight, Blog, Members' News, Members' Instagram Takeover, social media accounts and E-Zine, discounted entry fees to most TPS competitions, and discounts to programs and services offered through our partnerships.
If you are not sure of your TPS member status, please contact TPS at cpireland@texasphoto.org. All entry and membership fees are non-refundable.
CURATORIAL STATEMENT
Photography has long existed in tension between intimacy and magnitude. Traditionally held in the hands, printed in books, or viewed within modest frames, the photograph has often been understood as a small window onto the world. The Big Picture expands that window. This exhibition considers what happens when photographs grow beyond expectation, when scale transforms an image from something observed into something encountered, like the largest of paintings or sculptures.
By presenting works at a monumental size, The Big Picture invites viewers to slow down and physically engage with the photographic surface. Details once overlooked become landscapes of their own; gestures, textures, and moments accumulate into immersive experiences. We encourage artists to consider the enlargement of their work as not simply a technical process but a conceptual opportunity.
ELIGIBILITY
The Big Picture is open to artists internationally, of all levels, who are at least 18 years old at time of entry. Works exhibited previously in a TPS show are not eligible. Current members of the TPS Board of Directors are permitted to enter but are not eligible for awards.
IMAGE REQUIREMENTS
Please submit digital JPG files only, minimum of 1200 pixels on the longest side and 5 MB maximum. Please remove watermarks from images. For each image, you will need to provide the image title and the process (medium) used to make the image.
NOTE: If your work is selected for the show we will request a large resolution image and will print your image on wide format photographic paper. We will reach out to you to obtain a full resolution, non compressed image to print. Preferably in a raw or lossless format such as PSD or TIFF. Images must be over 80 mb. Texas Photographic Society reserves the right to disqualify any image that will not print at optimal quality.
SALES
TPS encourages the sale of exhibited work and will collect a 30% commission from prints sold during the exhibition to donate back to our sponsors. Please indicate the sales price of your print. If your finished piece is not for sale, simply note NFS. If your work is accepted and you do not indicate a sales price, the artwork will be listed as NFS.
TPS TERMS AND AGREEMENT
You retain all rights to your images. If your image is selected for the exhibition, you grant Texas Photographic Society (TPS) the right, in perpetuity, to use and display your image, image title and process, your name, city, state and country of residence for TPS publicity and promotion. Permissible use includes the display, reproduction and distribution of said information on the TPS website, in TPS exhibitions, presentations, program promotions, artist features, fundraising initiatives and publications, and on social media networks, without further contact from TPS. Please note that we may have to crop images to meet space/proportion requirements for promotional platforms.
TPS will not be held responsible for loss, theft, damage or replacement, whether caused by the negligence of its officers, members or others. TPS is not liable for damage during shipping. All entry and membership fees are non-refundable. Submission entry and payment signifies understanding and agreement to all of the above terms and conditions.
QUESTIONS?
If you have any questions, please contact Chris Ireland at cpireland@texasphoto.org.
ABOUT THE JUROR – Dornith Doherty
A 2012 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, Dornith Doherty is an American artist working primarily with photography, video, animations, works on paper, and scientific imaging. In projects that interweave the evidentiary and metaphoric powers of photographic images, Doherty illuminates ecological and philosophical issues that are often neglected when considering human entanglements in the environment. This has led to her many collaborations with scientists, archives, botanical centers, and research institutes concentrating on environmental themes to create artworks that use the beautiful intricacy of the natural world to inspire conversations around, and support for, the protection of a distant and unknowable future.
Doherty was born in Houston, Texas and received a B.A. cum laude from Rice University and a MFA in Photography from Yale University. She currently resides in Southlake and is Distinguished Research Professor at the University of North Texas, where she has been on the faculty since 1996. In addition to the Guggenheim Fellowship, she has also received grants from the Fulbright Foundation (Mexico), the Japan Foundation, the Indiana Arts Commission, and the United States Department of the Interior, the University of North Texas, and the Houston Center for Photography. She has been an artist-in-residence at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto/Ontario Science Centre, the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies, and Joshua Tree National Park. She was an artist affiliate at the Botanical Research Institute of Texas from 2021-2024. Doherty received the Honored Educator Award from the Society of Photographic Education South Central Conference in 2012 and, more recently, the Texas Legislature named her 2016 Texas State Artist 2D.
Doherty’s work has been featured in exhibitions widely in the US and abroad including solo exhibitions at the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C.; the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, TX; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto, Canada; and the Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, OH. Major curated group exhibitions include Unsettled Natures: Artists Reflect on the Age of Human, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C.; Seedscapes: Future-Proofing Nature at Impressions Gallery, Bradford, England, traveling to the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter, England; Seeds of Resistance, Broad Museum, East Lansing, Michigan; New Territory: Landscape Photography Today, Denver Museum of Art, Denver, Colorado; Big Botany: Conversations with the Plant World, Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, Kansas; State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; and Changing Circumstances: Looking at the Future of the Planet, FotoFest, Houston, TX.
Doherty’s work is in numerous permanent collections, including the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, TX; the Brandt Museum, Denmark; the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard University, Boston, MA; the Federal Reserve Bank, Houston, TX; Frontier Science & Technology Research Foundation, Boston, MA; the Kings Park Biodiversity Conservation Centre, Perth, Western Australia; the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN; the Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX; the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C.; the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX; and the Yale University Library, New Haven, CT, among others.
Doherty’s work has been written about extensively, including a monograph, Archiving Eden (2017). Her work has been featured by Harvard Business Review, Hyperallergic, National Geographic, New Yorker: Photo Booth, Oxford American Journal, Oxford Literary Journal, Smith Journal Australia, Smithsonian Magazine, Texas Monthly, Tomboy Tarts, Vice, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Wired magazine, among others.