On the Shelf 2025

In conjunction with the 2025 Filter Photo Festival, Filter Photo is pleased to present On the Shelf 2025, a photo book exhibition, juried by Tim Carpenter.

Juror's Statement

"I’m a person (perhaps like you) who tries to make sense of the world—to somehow manage or shape it—with and through a camera. Which means I’m also a photo book person. I don’t really care so much what the book is ‘about’ or what sort of facts or information might be extracted from it. Rather, I am drawn to the photo book as a way of understanding how another human being structures their world using a very peculiar machine.

But I suppose that ‘understanding’ is too much to ask: the truly individual, idiosyncratic otherness of another person can never be fully comprehended. Immersed in a photo book, I convene (merely, but happily) for a moment with that otherness.

I was overwhelmed by the submissions for this year’s On the Shelf. Not because of their quality or variety, both of which were abundant. But instead, because I was granted access to so many strange and wonderful interiorities. In these times when our lives are dominated by the external (the topical, the political), experiencing the dignity of the internal (quiet, unquenchable) in these photo books was a relief, a respite. An encouragement: for me, and I hope for all of us."

—Tim Carpenter

Accepted Artists

Evan Allan

Vladyslav Andrievsky

Filippo Barbero

Chloe Brover & Catie Leonard

Mikael Buck

Matt Calarco

Jo Ann Callis

Hellen Colman

Matthew Crowther

Anastasia Davis

Deanna Dikeman

Avery Edelman

Jack Garland

Jason Hendardy

Michael Hession, Honorable Mention

Leslie Hickey, Juror’s Choice

Zackery Hobler

Elijah Howe

Ming Jin

De Kwok

Ruth Lauer-Manenti

Doug Lowell

Amanda Marchand & Leah Sobsey

Paula McCartney

Clay Mills

Andrea Modica

Scott Offen

Jacopo Papucci

Sylvie Redmond

Jessica Rhodes

Andy Richter

Glen Scheffer

Ryan Searl

Sara Silks

Hiro Tanaka

Susan White

Chen Xiangyun

About the Juror

Tim Carpenter is a photographer, writer, and educator working in Brooklyn and central Illinois. He is the author of such photobooks as Local objects, Christmas Day, Bucks Pond Road, and Little, as well as the book-length essay To photograph is to learn how to die.

On View: September 5th – October 25th, 2025

Location: Filter Space | 1821 W Hubbard St, Suite 207