Our latest issue – Issue 4: Re(framing) Identity is available to preorder: Preorder Now
Thank you to everyone who submitted their photos. Stay tuned for future announcements.
Image credit (left to right): Marthilda Christin Finsae, Nanda Wibowo, Caron Toshiko
For this issue, Tiga Mata invites photographers from Southeast Asia to pause and reflect on the meaning of identity — as something whole, complex, and ever-evolving.
Curated by guest editor Caron Toshiko, this theme emerges from her personal journey of deconstructing and reimagining identity — as a woman, the eldest child in her family, and someone navigating societal roles and expectations. She reflects: How have the norms around me shaped the way I behave, speak, and see myself? What labels have been placed on me by family, tradition, or history; and which ones have I chosen to reclaim, resist, or rewrite?
Southeast Asia is home to a vast richness of ethnicities, languages, and lived experiences — shaped by migration, colonialism, resistance, kinship, and ritual. Through this open call, we invite you to explore the layers of your identity, and to reflect on how it is shaped, challenged, and expressed. We believe that to reinterpret and reclaim identity is not just a personal act, but a political one; one that can shift our thoughts, our behaviours, and our realities. To reframe identity is to open space for transformation.
We’re deeply inspired by theorists like Stuart Hall, who reminds us that identity is never fixed. In his words, it is “a matter of becoming as well as of being” — always in motion, always constructed through representation.
This issue aims to be a space where identity is explored as lived experience; drawn from personal archives, embodied memory, and collective history. We want to see identity not only as it is, but as it could be. Your image holds the power to dismantle dominant narratives that do not speak for you; and to build new ones that do.
As part of the design for this issue, we also invite participants to submit their accompanying narrative in their own handwriting, which may be incorporated directly into the visual layout. Typed submissions are equally welcome if preferred.
Let’s re(frame) identity — through your lens, and in your words.
— Tiga Mata Team with Guest Editor Caron Toshiko
Caron Toshiko is a therapeutic photography practitioner whose work explores the intersections of gender, mental health, and visual storytelling. Since 2014, she has run Gueari Galeri, an Indonesia-based photobook gallery and independent publisher. The gallery has published over 40 Indonesian photobook titles and serves as a platform for socially engaged photographic practices.
With an educational background in Psychology and photojournalism, her research and practice are rooted in questions of care, representation, and the politics of visibility. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, where her research focuses on gender and photography.
Please prepare your photographs using the following guide:
File format: JPG/JPEG
Image Quality: 8 10 (high quality)
Colour space: sRGB
Dimensions: 3000 pixels at its widest/longest side
DPI: 240 300 DPI (if possible)
All photographs should follow this format of naming, in lowercase:
fullname.number.jpg
For example :
Bob LEE CheeMing submitting 3 photos -
lee.cheeming.01.jpg, lee.cheeming.02.jpg, lee.cheeming.03.jpg,
All photo descriptions must be submitted in either Word (.doc/.docx) or PDF format. If you are submitting handwritten narratives, please scan and save them as JPG files.
Use the following file naming format in lowercase: fullname.number.filetype
For example, if Bob LEE CheeMing is submitting 3 photo descriptions, the files should be named as:
Please ensure consistency in naming and file format before submission.
Deadline has been extended. You may now submit your entry/photographs via our Tiga Mata #4 Submission Form before 3rd August 2025 (Sunday, 23:59 (Malaysia Time / +8 GMT).
There is no submission fee for entries.
