that one photograph — the image you never left behind
Years pass. People change. Places disappear. Entire parts of our lives quietly fall out of reach. And yet, some photographs remain impossibly close to us. Not because they are perfect, but because they continue holding something we were never fully able to leave behind.
Decagon Gallery invites photographers worldwide to submit one photograph only: the image they never left behind.
We are not searching for spectacle or technical perfection. We are interested in photographs that continue carrying emotional weight — images tied to memory, attachment, intimacy, grief, distance, tenderness, longing, or time. The strongest photographs will feel lived rather than constructed. They may be quiet, unresolved, visually restrained, or emotionally difficult to explain.
We are less interested in nostalgia itself than in the traces it leaves behind. What matters is whether something remains inside the image long after it was taken.