International Photography Contest Celebrating Women’s Strength and Beauty

Early Bird savings end February 19, 2026

Since the earliest days of photography, women have played a vital role in shaping visual culture—not only as subjects, but as authors of powerful narratives that define eras, challenge norms, and expand artistic boundaries.

Across documentary, fine art, fashion, portraiture, and experimental practices, women photographers have continuously redefined how stories are told through the lens. Photography remains one of the most powerful tools for exploring identity, resilience, strength, and beauty, and women continue to drive that evolution worldwide.

AAP Magazine 55 invites photographers from around the globe to submit their work for a special edition dedicated entirely to women. This international photography competition is open to all artists—emerging or established—who wish to present compelling visual interpretations centered on women and their stories.

A Global Photography Competition Dedicated to Women
The theme of AAP Magazine 55 is intentionally open, offering complete creative freedom. Submissions may explore personal narratives, social and cultural issues, identity, empowerment, or purely aesthetic visions of women.

All photographic genres and styles are welcome, including portrait, documentary, fashion, fine art, conceptual, sports, and commercial photography. Artists may submit work created using any technique, whether digital or film, color or black and white. What matters most is the strength of the visual storytelling.

@ Xavier Blondeau

Why Submit to AAP Magazine 55
AAP Magazine 55 is more than a photography contest—it is a platform for international recognition. Selected photographers will have their work published in a respected international photography magazine read by collectors, curators, editors, and photography professionals around the world.

In addition to global exposure, the competition awards a total of $1,000 in cash prizes. Winners benefit from editorial coverage, long-term online visibility, and professional recognition that can significantly elevate a photography career.

The first-place winner will receive a $500 cash prize, an exclusive interview, and prominent publication in AAP Magazine 55. Their work will be featured in the printed edition and showcased in the online Winners Gallery, reaching a worldwide audience.

The second-place winner will receive $300, and the third-place winner will receive $200. Both will enjoy the same international publication and visibility. A selection of honorable mentions will also be published in this special edition, ensuring broad exposure for outstanding work.

@ Landry Major

Reach an International Audience and Build Your Career
Being published in AAP Magazine places your photography in front of a global audience actively seeking contemporary visual work. Beyond the printed magazine, winning and selected images remain accessible online, continuing to attract attention long after publication.

Photographers featured in AAP Magazine gain credibility, visibility, and a lasting presence within the international photography community. This exposure can open doors to new opportunities, collaborations, and professional growth.

@ Grace Weston

How to Submit Your Photography
Submitting to AAP Magazine 55 is simple and open to photographers worldwide. Artists may enter with a single powerful image or a cohesive portfolio that explores the theme from a personal or conceptual perspective.

Whether your work is intimate or bold, documentary or artistic, this edition is an invitation to share your vision and contribute to a global celebration of women through photography.

AAP Magazine 55 is now accepting submissions. Photographers are encouraged to enter early and take part in an international edition dedicated to creativity, diversity, and visual storytelling.

Submit your work today and let your photography be seen, recognized, and celebrated worldwide.

@ Valentina Sinis

@ Nathalie Rubens

Anastasia Samoylova: Atlantic Coast

By Anastasia Samoylova

Publisher : Aperture and the Norton Museum of Art

2025 | 144 pages

Anastasia Samoylova: Atlantic Coast opens a vast, quietly unsettling portrait of the American East Coast — one in which nostalgia, dislocation and transformation are sewn into the landscape itself. In this new monograph, Samoylova retraces the route pioneered by Berenice Abbott in 1954, journeying from Florida to Maine to revisit the places Abbott once documented, and to observe what has become of them decades later. Her images — in vivid color and stark black and white — reveal the tension between myth and reality, between promises of progress and the traces of decay or displacement.

Where once small towns and coastal communities had a certain stillness, Samoylova finds change carved into facades and roadside signs, into suburban sprawl and shuttered shopfronts. She frames these scenes with a photographer’s patience and a poet’s sensitivity — capturing abandoned diners, empty motels, decaying houses, ghostly intersections. At the same time, there is stubborn life: occasional portraits of people, wildlife, reminders that behind every sign of decline, someone, something endures.

Her book does not simply document physical places. It traces the shifting contours of identity, belonging and memory in a nation where the open road has long symbolized freedom — and where that ideal has become tangled with consumerism, environmental degradation, and socio-economic upheaval. Through Atlantic Coast, Samoylova asks whether the “American Dream” remains intact, or if it has fractured along with the towns her car passes through.

Reading this volume is to experience a slow, attentive journey — as a witness, as a traveller, as someone invited to reconsider what America has become. Her photographs linger, subtly unsettling the viewer’s assumptions about beauty, progress and decline. In its silence and restraint, the book whispers that memory, identity and place are fragile — and that every road carries stories worth listening to.

Coreen Simpson: A Monograph

By Coreen Simpson

Publisher : Aperture

2025 | 224 pages

Coreen Simpson: A Monograph is the first major book dedicated to the influential photographer and jewelry designer whose career spans more than fifty years. As the second volume in the Vision & Justice Book Series—a groundbreaking initiative created by Dr. Sarah Lewis and coedited with Drs. Leigh Raiford and Deborah Willis—the monograph celebrates Simpson’s enduring impact on visual culture.

Simpson began her career as a journalist before turning to photography, capturing the richness of Black life, fashion, and identity. Her portraits of icons such as Grace Jones, Muhammad Ali, and Toni Morrison, as well as her iconic B-Boys series from the 1980s, showcase her eye for style, pride, and self-expression. The book also features her later work with collage and overpainting, alongside the story of her celebrated jewelry line, including the iconic Black Cameo worn by Rosa Parks and Rihanna.

Featuring original essays by leading voices such as Bridget R. Cooks, Rujeko Hockley, Awol Erizku, and Doreen St. Félix, as well as an in-depth interview by Deborah Willis, Coreen Simpson: A Monograph offers a multifaceted portrait of an artist whose work continues to shape the worlds of photography, fashion, and Black cultural history.

Daido Moriyama: Quartet

By Daido Moriyama

Publisher : Getty Publications

2025 | 440 pages

Explore the groundbreaking early work of Daido Moriyama, one of Japan’s most radical photographers, with this collectible, slipcased photobook.

Daido Moriyama (b. 1938) is one of Japan’s most renowned and prolific photographers. His diverse projects often focus on urban landscapes, exploring light and shadow, and form and abstraction. Using a handheld camera and high-contrast black-and-white film, Moriyama captures Tokyo’s chaotic streets and clandestine underbelly, revealing the darkness and strangeness beneath the surface.

Daido Moriyama: Quartet is a vital anthology of the four seminal photobooks that form the foundation of Moriyama’s career as a photographer: Japan: A Photo Theater, A Hunter, Farewell Photography, and Light and Shadow. Spanning the fifteen years during which he honed his techniques and unveiled his distinctive vision, these photobooks were originally released as limited editions in Japan and represent some of the most daring ventures in photographic publishing history. Edited by Mark Holborn, this compilation includes excerpts from Moriyama’s diaries, journals, and memoranda, offering intimate glimpses into the core of his creative process. Presented in a slipcase, this volume is essential for all Moriyama fans and anyone passionate about photography and visual culture.

All About Daido Moriyama

Critical Photojournalism: Contemporary Ethics and Practices

By Tara Pixley, Judy Walgren

Publisher : ‎ Routledge

2025 | 226 pages

An essential introduction to the complexities of visual representation, this book offers a critical new framework for understanding and practicing photojournalism in a global digital context.

Critical Photojournalism guides readers through a variety of ethical, technical and business skills, plus the mental health, self-care and safety considerations necessary to thrive in the field. Drawing on their extensive industry and teaching experience, the authors provide real-world advice on how to navigate the demands of the profession while addressing the impact that photojournalism has on society and ways that photojournalists can mitigate harm. Consideration is given to understanding and disrupting implicit bias and power structures in newsrooms, as well as issues around access, working in breaking news environments and balancing informed consent with varying media laws around the world. In accessible language, this book highlights the importance of collaboration and community engagement in contemporary photojournalism and encourages students to adopt a decolonial approach to their work. Readers will learn to balance the needs for accuracy and thoughtfulness with the priorities of a global, social-media-engaged audience.

This is a key textbook for those seeking a nuanced introduction to visual journalism and/or a fresh approach to their craft. This book is supported by a website which can be accessed at www.criticalphotojournalism.com. The website includes a full-length bonus chapter on video and photojournalism, interviews with professional visual journalists, further tips and tools, and a glossary of key terms.

International Photography Contest Celebrating Women’s Strength and Beauty

Early Bird savings end February 19, 2026

Enter AAP Magazine 55 Women

Selected Books