Germany’s Romka magazine have opened submissions for their next issue and ask you to send your most valued photograph and the memory behind it. Acting as a collective photo album in which people from all over the globe share the stories behind their images, Romka produce an annual print issue featuring the work of both amateur and professional photographers. With previous contribution from the likes of Alec Soth, Roger Ballen, Nicolai Howalt, Robin Schwartz alongside younger contemporaries like Jerry Hsu and Nathanael Turner, Romka have a long standing history of producing beautiful publications.

You can submit up to three images and stories via email: submit@romkamagazine.com  Deadline: December 1st 2014

“This photograph was taken in a Park in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1968. I had recently obtained a Nikon FTN from my parents as a high school graduation present. My mother worked at Magnum and started one of the first photography galleries in the United States. In turn, I implicitly understood that a camera could be a tool to express one’s “inner being.”

At this time I was very interested in photographing older men and took this image of the two men fishing in the pond. I often have considered it to be my first image that had an aspect of myself in it.

That same day that I shot this image, I visited a van Gogh exhibition at a museum nearby. The show was an incredible revelation to me as it revealed to me that art could be a means to come into contact with deeper realities” – Roger Ballen.

Images in order of appearance – Roger Ballen,  Laurent Ripoll, Aline Smithson, Robin Schwartz, Michal Brezinsky, Nathanael Turner, Haiko Hebig and Nicolai Howalt. (Images from Issues 6/7/8).