FUTURES Foundation is excited to announce a new partnership with Paris Photo and Carte Blanche. As supporting partner, FUTURES will collaborate with the Carte Blanche program to provide the students finalists and the laureates with a curated educational program. The partnership will also include the possibility for one of the Carte Blanche laureates to participate in the FUTURES Residency Program in Amsterdam.
FUTURES will be present during Paris Photo 2025 on Friday November 14 at 5 PM at the Carte Blanche booth at the Grand Palais, where we will have the opportunity to meet the finalists and laureates of the Carte Blanche Students program. We are enthusiastic to work together with Paris Photo and welcome the students from the Carte Blanche Program in the FUTURES community.
Join us for a talk and workshop with Michał Sita & Anna Pilawska-Sita, presenting their research The Ontologies of Space – Case Studies of Jeju.
"Recently, thanks to an invitation from the Jeju Museum of Art, we've been working together in South Korea, exploring the tensions embedded in the landscape of Jeju island. Our first focus point was on military structures from the Japanese colonial period—bunkers built deep into volcanic hills. While the surrounding environment may seem largely untouched, these bunkers continue to subtly transform it, bending it to the logic of warfare. Hills become networks of fortresses; forests turn into camouflage. The ecosystem itself becomes part of the military infrastructure, just like the concrete walls and underground corridors. This idea—that architecture acts as a device reshaping what a landscape is and can be—was at the core of the work we presented at the Jeju Biennale last year. We examined the lingering power and impact of postcolonial architecture.
In 2025, we had another opportunity to work in Jeju, focusing on another kind of transformation: the tensions between nature and golf infrastructure, which is widespread across the island. We asked ourselves: what happens to "nature" when it’s shaped by the logic of large-scale country club developments?
Alongside our artistic work, we also conducted a curatorial survey, researching the practices of artists engaged with nature–landscape relationships in Jeju. The process provided us with an understanding of the artistic practices in Jeju that seek to identify the norms guiding usage of space and nature, or propose subversive strategies for defining and acting upon the natural environment.
The open studio will provide us with an opportunity to test the way we revisited the materials we've gathered. During the residency we’ve been working to deepen our collaboration with Korean artists—trying to develop an infrastructure that will enable confronting multiple existing perspectives on the ontology of nature and space in Jeju, and testing new ones."
Event Details:
- 16:30 – Workshop
- 17:30 – Open studio starts
- 18:30 – Talk
- Studio Open Until: 20:00
- Location: FUTURES Photography Hub, Isaac Titsinghkade 6A, B, 1018 CA Amsterdam
⛳️ RSPV HERE
About the workshop:
We can think about the environment through various perspectives, each specific to different organisms or objects. Sometimes, a simple shift in perspective or in how we engage with our surroundings is enough for a landscape to take on new meanings, aligned with a parallel logic. This is precisely how artists working in recent years on the Korean island of Jeju have attempted to rethink their relationship with space — observing it from peripheral positions — through the lens of palm trees, weeds, or historically charged sites of violence. Such exercises in situated awareness have allowed hidden tensions in the relationships between humans, the environment, and the history of a place to surface. We, too, followed this path. We observed how the operation of golf courses on Jeju affects the nature and landscape. Golf has the ability to subject vast areas to the rules of the game, its aesthetics, and the logic of movement characteristic of the sport.
But what practical consequences arise from a shift in how we understand space, if we begin to define it according to the rules of golf? What, for example, will happen to the Futures Hub space if we subordinate it to the logic of a golf ball? During the workshops, we will try to explore this by making provisional changes and adaptations that will allow us to create a functional practice area for golf.
The opening is part of FUTURES X MPB residency, supported by MPB, the largest global platform to buy, sell and trade used photo and video kit.
Supported by Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst (AFK).
© Michał Sita
FUTURES & Magnum Photos invite you to join us for our next online Artist Spotlight with Lia Darjes.
For this talk, Lia Darjes will present her project Plates I-XXXI, published by Chose Commune in 2024.
The enigmatic guests at Lia Darjes’ banquet seem straight out of a fairy tale. Plates I-XXXI is a silent series in vivid colours that unveils the magic of an unexpected reality.
Squirrels, tits, slugs, field mice, ants, sparrows: these are some of the small animals that become the protagonists of Lia Darjes’ mysterious tale. Far from frightening, they captivate and charm with their furtive spirit.
Plates I-XXXI is a silent, colourful series that lifts the veil to reveal that unexpected visitors and magical parallel worlds are closer than we think. Lia will being her talk by discussing the start of her career, explaining how she transitioned from photojournalism to documentary photography, a journey that ultimately led to the creation of Plates I-XXXI.
About FUTURES x Magnum Artist Spotlight:
Every other month, we invite a photographer from the FUTURES platform to join us for an engaging online conversation about their artistic journey. Thanks to the online format, these talks are accessible to audiences around the world, offering a rare opportunity to hear directly from emerging artists about their work, motivations, and creative processes.
This series also aims to inspire the next generation of photographers by connecting them with practitioners who are still in the early stages of their careers—offering valuable insights and inspiration for others navigating similar paths.
Free – Registration required by following this link
© Lia Darjes
Join us for a talk with Giangavino Pazzola, Curator at Camera-Italian Center for Photography. He will present his research on New Documentary Strategies, developed during his residency in Amsterdam in July.
"Over the last decade, in Italy several experts have interpreted emerging practices in the Italian context as experiences close to the notions of post and metaphotography. However, there has been little attention given to more recent and innovative studies such as Speculative Documentary (Bellinck & van Dienderen, 2019) or New Documentary Strategies (Hamilton, 2021), both active in Northern Europe. These approaches emphasize the aesthetic, political, social, and technological specificities of the medium. The research investigates the photographic production of Italian authors active after 2004 (the year the Flickr website was launched, and art historian Hal Foster published An Archival Impulse) like Lorenzo Vitturi, Arianna Arcara, Federico Clavarino, Marina Caneve, Salvatore Vitale, Silvia Rosi, Karim El Makthafi and more to trace their roots and continuities with previous generations, and to position them within an updated and international critical horizon."
Event Details
Date: Wednesday, 08 October 2025
Walk in: 17.15 -17.30
Workshop: 17.30 -19.00
Talk: 19.00
Studio Open Until: 20:00
Location: FUTURES Photography Hub, Isaac Titsinghkade 6A, B, 1018 CA Amsterdam
About the Workshop
Based on the research made by the curator of CAMERA in the Italian context, NDS is a theoretical-practical workshop in which participants will be asked to apply the idea of playfulness as a metaphor for reading and interpreting contemporary life. A research method and, at the same time, a daily practice for investigating the formation of photographic art practices, NDS is a stimulus to cross the boundaries and limits of the documentary in order to reposition oneself in relation to them and find new meanings and narratives. Exploring the potential of storytelling through images and the use of photography in dialogue with other media like texts, video, performance and sculptures, NDS critically reflects on issues like truth and objectivity nowadays.
Who can attend?
Anyone interested is welcome to participate.
What is needed?
Participants may bring a portfolio if they wish, but it is not required.
This research project is supported by Strategia Fotografia 2024, an initiative of the Italian Ministry of Culture’s Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity.
Partners Fotodok and Camera-Italian Center for Photography.
Photo Credit: Marina Caneve
The exhibition Ties that Bind opens on October 4 at the Holešovice Market, Hall 11A, in Prague, the last destination after Zagreb and Porto.
The exhibition explores the shifting forms of relationality, belonging, and closeness. Through the works of Dev Dhunsi, Sasha Chaika, Ihar Hancharuk, Donja Nasseri and Sheung Yiu, it examines the ways in which traditional notions of family, identity, and social structures can be re-evaluated and reshaped. Rather than fixed categories, it offers space for open-ended, often contradictory or temporary forms of bonds that form between people, places, and species.
The presented works navigate between personal experience and broader cultural and political contexts. Language, the body, memory, and imagination are presented through photography, installation, text, and performative elements as means of creating bonds as well as disrupting them.The exhibition thus raises questions about what new forms of closeness we can envision and whether it is possible to form relationships beyond established frameworks or at least momentarily challenge these boundaries.
The development of the theme and the selection was curated by the institutions Bienal Fotografia do Porto, Fotogalleriet, Fotograf Zone, and Organ Vida Festival. Ties That Bind exhibition in Prague is curated by Světlana Malina.
Exhibition run: 4 October - 12 October 2025
Location: Holešovice Market, Hall 11A (“The Glasshouse / Skleněnka”), Prague, Czech Republic
More info at https://fotograf.zone/
FUTURES is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. Union. The Swiss program is supported by Pro Helvetia.
Credits image Sheung Yiu
The exhibiton Metamorphosis opens on October 4 at the Holešovice Market, Hall 13, in Prague.
The exhibition presents eight artistic approaches that explore how social structures, modes of perception, and memory evolve over time. The presented projects address urgent political and social issues of today – from the impact of conflicts across the Eurasian continent to ecological and introspective themes. They interweave myth, both collective and personal memory, and shifting narratives that influence our ability to understand the past and navigate the present. The exhibiting artists explore how identity is formed between reality and fiction, between individual story and broader societal framework.
Ksenia Ivanova, Benedetta Casagrande, Vitalii Halanzha, Emilia Martin, Anna Orłowska, Yana Wernicke, Viktoriia Tymonova and Balázs Turós differ in visual language and initial context, but are united by their sensitivity to liminal and transitional situations. Their works depict the world as a space of constant change.
The selection of projects was prepared by curators Emese Mucsi (Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center, Budapest), Raphaëlle Stopin (Centre photographique Rouen Normandie, France) and Světlana Malina (Fotograf Zone, Czech Republic). The theme of the exhibition was developed in close collaboration with Angel Luis Gonzalez and Julia Gelez (PhotoIreland / OVER Journal). The exhibition, curated by Světlana Malina, is presented for the first time as part of the Fotograf Zone festival in Prague.
Exhibition run: 4 October - 12 October 2025
Location: Holešovice Market, Hall 13, Prague, Czech Republic
More info at https://fotograf.zone/
FUTURES is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. Union. The Swiss program is supported by Pro Helvetia.
Credits image Máté Bartha
During this year FUTURES Annual Event, hosted by Fotograf Zone in Prague between October 3-5, FUTURES artists will have the opportunity to take part in dedicated workshops focusing on building narratives, the role of titles and annotations, and the relationship between photography and algorithms.
With writer Petra Hůlová they will learn strategies of combining text with visual material in order to create new meaning and gain knowledge about subversive potential of annotation.
Artists Tereza Zelenková and Peter Watkins will challenge the workshop participants to edit and re-edit their own photographic series responding to prompts and to explore unusual sequencing strategies and narrative framings.
The third workshop will be led by an experimental artist Oliver Chanarin who will encourage the artists to work with their own, found or archival photographs, freely combining them with text-based or coded elements while putting emphasis on playful approaches to language, shifting meanings, and critical reflection on contemporary visual culture.
The workshops during the Annual Event are curated exclusively for FUTURES artists.
FUTURES is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. Union. The Swiss program is supported by Pro Helvetia.
This year the FUTURES Annual Event will be hosted by Fotograf Zone in Prague. Artists and international curators will meet from 3 to 5 October in the frame of the Fotograf Zone Festival, within an inspiring and dynamic environment. The three-day program will include the opening of two exhibitions to the general public: Metamorphosis, showcasing for the first time the projects by the FUTURES artists selected for this year annual theme, and Ties That Bind, whose journey comes to and end in Prague, after travelling to Porto and Zagreb. Both exhibitions have been curated by Světlana Malina and are part of the Fotograf Zone Festival 2025 with the topic TALK TOGETHER.
Over the course of the event, FUTURES artists will have the opportunity to take part in dedicated workshops focusing on building narratives, the role of titles and annotations, and the relationship between photography and algorithms, as well as portfolio reviews with international experts, feedback sessions and networking moments.
The Annual Event is exclusively for FUTURES artists.
FUTURES is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. Union. The Swiss program is supported by Pro Helvetia.
Join us for an Open Studio with Olena Morozova, our newest resident at the FUTURES Hub. She will present her project The Roots Are Breathing, developed during her September residency in Amsterdam as part of the FUTURES x MPB program.
“The Roots Are Breathing is an installation assembled from natural materials found on site: twigs, bark, leaves, dry plants, earth, stone, moss. Complemented by clay moulds and simple drawings on paper or cardboard, it forms a fragile, poetic composition spread out on the floor, a wooden surface or in a corner of the hall - as if nature itself had quietly come inside to remind us of itself.”
Event Details
Date: Thursday, 25 September 2025
Walk-in: 17:45 – 18:15
Artist Q&A: 18:30
Studio Open Until: 20:00
Location: FUTURES Photography Hub, Isaac Titsinghkade 6A, B, 1018 CA Amsterdam
👉 Please RSVP by 24th September 2025 to confirm your attendance.
The opening is part of FUTURES X MPB residency, supported by MPB, the largest global platform to buy, sell and trade used photo and video equipment.
FUTURES & Magnum Photos invite you to join us for our next online Artist Spotlight with Sheung Yiu.
For this talk, Sheung Yiu will present his ongoing project (Inter)Faces of Predictions, or How To Read a Face.
Across Eastern and Western cultures, societies have developed ways to predict a person’s character through facial features. In East Asian cultures, the esoteric practice of face-reading promises the power to see into one’s future through facial analysis. Though face reading remains largely a folk belief, many continue to seek the occult power of predictions from face readers. In the West, the forgotten pseudo-science of physiognomy, combined with statistics and machine learning, re-enters our modern lives as facial recognition algorithms, perpetuating societal biases and individual prejudices.
In this project, Sheung Yiu blends the visual language of the occult in face reading with the “scientific” aesthetic of facial recognition to blur the lines between these practices from the East and West. This visual study reveals the similarities between the two predictive regimes centered around the face: one remains folklore, while the other is extensively applied to almost every aspect of our daily lives. The project challenges the automation bias of facial recognition (or what he calls “Western face reading”) and unveils the deeper, often unexamined belief system underlying these practices.
About FUTURES x Magnum Artist Spotlight:
Every two months, we invite a photographer from the FUTURES platform to join us for an engaging online conversation about their artistic journey. Thanks to the online format, these talks are accessible to audiences around the world, offering a rare opportunity to hear directly from emerging artists about their work, motivations, and creative processes.
This series also aims to inspire the next generation of photographers by connecting them with practitioners who are still in the early stages of their careers—offering valuable insights and inspiration for others navigating similar paths.
Free – Registration required by following this link
© Sheung Yiu