Call for Entries –Our Town

griffin front with flowers — © Marybeth Dixon – *A Summer Evening at the Griffin*

As a part of the 2023 Photoville x Winchester public art program, the Griffin Museum of Photography is pleased to present Our Town, a public art installation and exhibition of your creativity. This year, we’re assembling photos that celebrates everyday life in our town of Winchester. Our Town will be featured on the fence surrounding the MBTA station construction on the Winchester Town Common from June to September, 2023.

Want your work featured?

Submit your best photographs showing what life in Winchester means to you. This could be images of your pets, your work, your friends; whatever feels most like home. They can be landscapes, portraits or still lifes. Anything that reminds you of home.

The exhibition Our Town will also be featured on the Griffin Museum website in an online gallery during the summer exhibition

Submission Information

Submissions can be sent as JPEG or PDF files to photos@griffinmuseum.org from now up through May 19th, at 11:59p.m.

Participation in the contest is free to everyone.

We look forward to seeing your submissions.

Questions? email us at photos@griffin museum.org

or call the museum during business hours, Tuesday – Sunday 10am – 4pm.

The Photoville FENCE is coming to Winchester from June 20, 2020 until the week of August 24, 2020.
Coming to see the Fence? Print out the map and artist locations before you come.

This 8th edition of The Photoville FENCE in Winchester is unlike any past exhibition of this year-round public photography project, including the exhibitions we and others have presented on the fences of SoWA and around Boston over the years. This exhibition will take the form of Photo-Xs with a 10-foot diameter, one of Photoville’s customizable, modular and transportable systems to exhibit photography indoors and outdoors. In the largest display of Photo-Xs, fifteen of these structures will be distributed throughout our Winchester Cultural District. Our installation is one of 13 installation sites in the United States and Canada.

We brought this exhibition to Winchester to celebrate our town becoming a cultural district, and because Winchester is an epicenter for photography. Though Winchester does not have the fencing required for the usual Photoville FENCE exhibition, its plentiful public spaces provide an opportunity for a one-of-a-kind exhibition that connects the town through photography and visual stories.

With this outdoor exhibition, our public gets to experience our town and its cultural institutions and businesses through a nice manageable walk and a scavenger hunt type journey. These installations are all ADA compliant. Masks and social distancing are required during these times. We ask visitors not to touch the installations for sanitary reasons and please maintain 6 feet of social distance.

The photographers of the 8th Edition of the Photoville FENCE and the New England Regional Showcase will be on view beginning June 20, 2020. We will install on June 17/18, 2020. A selection of photographs from the Winchester and Burlington High Schools will also be showcased on the Photo-Xs.

The Photoville FENCE exhibition was planned to open alongside a festival involving the cultural institutions of Winchester on June 20, 2020. The Festival would have been free for the public as well with advanced ticketing. Due to the virus we can not be able to move forward with a live festival. We will plan a virtual festival during the installation.

See two example photographs of the X’s from Photoville Fence in Winchester 8th edition.

An event and exhibition like this takes a village to produce. Our village includes the people of Photoville the photographers from all over the world who submitted to The Photoville FENCE, and the scores of jurors who reviewed this massive international project. On a local level, the Griffin Museum of Photography has such gratitude for Mary McKenna, AIA, LEED AP, Chair of the Winchester Cultural District whose vision and persistence kept us on track. We thank Lisa Wong, the Town Manager of Winchester, for her foresight and feedback. We thank the Winchester Cultural District and the Mass Cultural Council for funding, along with the Arthur Griffin Foundation (no relation to the Griffin Museum) and the Winchester Cultural Council. We also want to thank Ms. Levatino and Ms. Djordjevic of Winchester High School and Burlington High School for their organization and scanning efforts. Lastly, but not least at all, our gratitude goes to the interns for the Photoville FENCE from Winchester High School led by Mary McKenna. The map shown above was produced by Nathan Shepard of Winchester High School. This village wouldn’t be complete without our great public. We hope you will visit our town’s installation of the Photoville FENCE in Winchester.

Submissions are currently open for the 9th edition of The Photoville FENCE, which will be displayed in 9 cities between summer 2020 and summer 2021. Visit the website for details and to submit: fence.photovile.com

Any questions? Let us know. Visiting the Photoville FENCE in Winchester is free for all. Masks are manditory in public spaces during these times. Take out food for lunch or dinner in our many business establishments set up to control social distancing with established protocols. Shop our stores using social distancing protocols as well. Visit the Griffin Museum of Photography when we open, observing our social distancing protocols and using masks. All are welcome here when we finally open.

Check out the Winchester Star Article on the Photoville Fence in Winchester.

See the article in What Will You Remember by Suzanne Révy.

Press release for the Photoville Fence in Winchester.