For most, the front of a refrigerator is a rotating display for life’s ephemera: grocery lists, receipts, children’s drawings or a magnetic poem crafted half-heartedly at 2 a.m. For photographer Yorgos Efthymiadis, the fridge inside his Somerville apartment has been a platform for showcasing fine art photography and a point of connection between artists, curators, gallerists and publishers from around the world.
Four times a year, Efthymiadis opens the doors of his plant-filled apartment, styled with midcentury modern aesthetics, to host an intimate and inventive micro gallery on his white refrigerator. He calls the gallery The Curated Fridge, and for the past 10 years, he has accepted photography submissions from lens-based artists from around the world. What started as a convenient, magnetic surface for Efthymiadis to visualize his own portfolio has expanded over the years into a robust curatorial platform with more than 40 guest curators and 1,500 featured artists since its inception in 2015. On July 27, The Curated Fridge hosted its 43rd exhibition, curated by Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, curator Karen Haas, to celebrate the project’s 10th anniversary.
Well-established and burgeoning artists alike have been featured on The Curated Fridge. The submission process is democratic: Anyone can submit up to five images, free of charge, making the opportunity accessible to artists of all backgrounds. While TCF’s first show garnered around 20 submissions, the upcoming exhibition received more than 1,100 from more than 250 artists – a testament to the project’s exponential reach.
As the project has grown, early career photographers and fine art students from institutions such as MassArt have come to know The Curated Fridge as a space where they can gain experience and expand their network. TCF even has an ongoing relationship with the daily photography journal Lenscratch, with a dedicated show each fall that includes student work.
“The show coincides with Lenscratch’s portfolio review for students,” Efthymiadis notes. “There are maybe 15 photographers, editors, or gallerists who review submissions. I am one of them, and they give prizes in first, second and third place, along with honorable mentions. Every fall, I put those winners on the fridge.”
Efthymiadis himself is a well-established photographer, recently awarded the James and Audrey Foster Prize. His connections to the photography community are part of what makes the project a success, often drawing from his wide network when selecting curators. The curatorial process for this medium is unlike a typical exhibition in many ways. Over the span of several months, a typical curator may sort through digital submissions from a gallery’s pool of artists. At TCF, artists mail their prints directly to Efthymiadis for him and the appointed curator to parse through.
“There is a joy in putting things next to each other and seeing how that changes the experience of one image by placing the two together,” Karen Haas says. “[The curation] was done over the course of hours and hours of a day, and that’s unlike anything you ever do as a curator.”
The Curated Fridge’s process is an exercise in experimentation. Efthymiadis’ unorthodox space allows for a web of interconnected images that intermingle in unexpected ways. In a complicated moment for images diluted by artificially generated content and the constant onslaught of unending social media feeds, TCF offers an alternative viewing platform for considering the composition of an image.
“With something like the Curated Fridge, you’re responding to the work in a very direct and visceral way,” Haas explains. “It feels very intuitive after a while. I don’t have any of that additional information about the conceptual underpinning [of the piece]. I am going completely from the gut. It’s totally different, but it’s so exciting.”
With more than 50 images made by more than 50 artists in this current exhibition, the simple white refrigerator offers the perfect canvas for the dialogue between conversing images to shift and spiral in different directions. Anastasia Sierra’s image of a disembodied arm, contorted at the wrist, mirrors the wilted green stems of Astrid Reischwitz’s rutabaga still life. Charlie Zehner’s portrait of a well-loved stuffed rabbit splayed on its back reaches for the twisted figure in Hannah Altman’s image, muddying the lines between animate and inanimate objects. Cullen Gardner’s photograph of an upright miniature pony standing on a brick-lined urban landscape resolves this warping, beastly tension and plays with the dichotomy of natural versus artificial.
The Curated Fridge has made appearances on refrigerators across the United States. In 2018, it was featured at the Culinary Institute of America at Copia in Napa, California. In 2023, the project traveled to Culture Lab LIC in New York, and in 2024, it posted up on a vibrant red refrigerator installed as part of UnBound13! at Candela Books + Gallery in Richmond, Virginia.
The project’s success was acknowledged with a prestigious 2025 Lucie Award nomination in the Support Categories for Photography Content of the Year. As one of the top photography awards globally across disciplines, including journalism, sports, portraiture and fine art, this recognition further validates The Curated Fridge’s innovative spirit and impact within the photography field.
The Curated Fridge is more than just an experimental gallery. It’s a launchpad for community building. Those who attend openings in Efthymiadis’ home are greeted by his friendly dog, Mīlu, and may gather in his Somerville backyard with fellow artists, curators or publishers to build connections over a bag of Cape Cod potato chips. To display fine art photography on a fridge feels immediately disarming and offers a sense of intimacy and familiarity. Access to space is a perennial issue in Greater Boston, but TCF has carved out an impactful corner of the kitchen and the photography community.
A version of this post appeared originally in the Boston Art Review.
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