Presence / Absence

What is present in a photograph —
and what is missing?

For our latest RPS Women in Photography competition, we invite members to respond to the theme Presence / Absence.

Photography has a unique relationship with presence and absence. A photograph can preserve something that has disappeared, suggest what lies beyond the frame, make visible something that might otherwise go unnoticed, or evoke a person, place, experience or feeling without showing it directly.

Or something entirely different. We are deliberately leaving the interpretation open.

Your response might be a single photograph or a diptych — perhaps using two images to explore a relationship, contrast or tension between presence and absence.

Take Presence / Absence as your starting point and see where it takes you.

Perhaps your photograph contains traces of someone who isn’t pictured. It might explore an empty space, an altered landscape, an object carrying a memory, the human body, a relationship, a transition, or something that once existed but has disappeared.

Your response can be personal or observational, literal or metaphorical. It can be made through portraiture, self-portraiture, documentary, landscape, still life, abstraction, constructed photography or any other photographic approach.

What can a photograph reveal — and what can it withhold?

Take part

How to enter

Open exclusively to members of the RPS Women in Photography Group.

Submit one photograph or one diptych, together with up to 100 words explaining your interpretation of Presence / Absence and, if you wish, a little about the thinking behind your work.

A diptych should consist of two photographs intended to be viewed together as a single work and should be submitted as one combined image file.

Judge & Prize

Eli Pimentel ARPS

This competition is inspired by Phantom Bodies: Material Obsessions by WIP member Eli Pimentel ARPS. We are delighted that Eli has agreed to judge the competition and select the winning work.

The winner will receive a copy of Eli’s beautifully produced, hand-bound artist’s book Phantom Bodies: Material Obsessions.

Eli Pimentel ARPS

The inspiration

Phantom Bodies: Material Obsessions

Phantom Bodies: Material Obsessions
Eli Pimentel ARPS

Eli Pimentel’s deeply personal artist’s book explores the body, memory, trauma and mortality through photography, mixed-media artwork and philosophical reflection.

The work grew from Eli’s experience of undergoing major surgery as a young child, when one of her lungs was removed. With no conscious memory of the event, she uses photography and art to explore the gaps between what happened to her body, what can be remembered and what can be imagined.

The book brings together photography and medical imagery with physical interventions and materials. Medical scans are transformed through embroidery using materials including horsehair, steel, silk and wool, while other images draw upon organic matter, natural forms and objects.

It also raises fascinating questions about what photography can make visible — and what inevitably remains unseen.

The physical edition of Phantom Bodies was printed and hand-bound by Book Works in London and has been exhibited at Offprint at Tate Britain. It is also included in the RPS Women in Photography Members’ Photobook Library.

Want to take part?

If you’re already an RPS member, you can add Women in Photography as your specialist group — and if you’re not yet part of the RPS, perhaps now is the time to come and join us.

We’d love to welcome you.