Google’s Creator Labs and multi-platform publisher Aperture have just kicked off the national open call for the second season of The Creator Labs Photo Fund. The initiative, which awarded 20 image makers in 2021, supports 30 artists working in photography and lens-based practices with a one-time grant of 6K.

“Partnering with Google on the second season of the Creator Labs Photo Fund embodies Aperture’s longstanding mission to surface and support new voices in photography,” says Aperture’s creative director, Lesley A. Martin. While Aperture remains a platform that fosters critical dialogue and offers a thriving space for the photographic community, the partnership with Google allows the opportunity to support and discover emerging artists.

To celebrate the opening of the project, Creator Labs, Aperture, and SN37 invited three recipients of the first Creator Labs Photo Fund grant in 2021 to join a conversation moderated by writer and editor, Nicole Acheampong, and senior managing editor of Aperture magazine, Brendan Embser. The panelists are Brooklyn-based artist and director Adraint Bereal, who is set to publish an expansion of his self-published book The Black Yearbook, which illustrates the experiences of Black students across the United States, in spring 2024 with Penguin Random House; Daveed Baptiste, a multidisciplinary maker working in fashion design, photography, and textiles, whose work explores his multidimensional identity as an immigrant and queer person from the Caribbean living in America; and artist Sydney Mieko King, a current MFA candidate at Yale School of Art, whose work explores the potential of the body and its trace as a vessel for memory.

The national open call starts on April 5 and runs through May 1, 2023. Submissions are free and open to any photographer or lens-based artist living in the United States. To apply, all entrants will need to submit 8 to 10 images from one body of work, showing a commitment to making a cohesive and compelling series or project. The project can be but does not need to be finished to enter. “We recognize the impact of images within our shared world and actively encourage and cultivate the creative exchange around this work,” Martin said. Anybody, regardless of their prior experience, publications, or exhibition history, can participate in the Creator Labs Photo Fund. Entrants will be evaluated exclusively on the strength and originality of their vision. Got a story to tell? Give it a try, this might be the opportunity of a lifetime.