Characterized by a penchant for sheer entropy and excess, my practice pushes the poetics of chaos to the very limits of the photographic medium. From landscapes and bodies, to human connection, to infrastructure and interior worlds, anything can be sucked into my process and churned back out, transmogrified and transformed through chemical manipulations and surreal photo-collages.
Part travel diary and part love letter to the cities of Tokyo and Osaka, In Bloom is a searing, hyper-visual journey into the heart of Japanese underground culture and an ode to the overwhelming experience of seeing a place with the eyes of a stranger for the first time. The project reads as a frenetic dream sequence, as if the countless nights he spent in the belly of the city have folded into a single never-ending one.
Printing my images onto plastic paper so the ink never quite dries, I then uses water and chemicals to transform the surface of the prints, abstracting and blurring them as if the scenes are melting away.
His artistic work is closely related to the technological workshop, experimentation and the search for suitable means of expression to communicate content. He is interested in the interpenetration of the fields of art, where sound, image and space can provoke impulses through which intuition complements logical thinking – where the exposure to a work of art builds the experience of art.
Bartłomiej Talaga is a graduate of and teacher at the Film School in Łódź. In his work, he shares his own experience with students and focuses on the purposefulness and legitimacy of gestures that lead to personal and authentic expression. He is also a co-founder of the TON magazine (ton-mag.pl) and a designer of photography books.
Read more
Fred Mungo (b. 1994) is an Italian photographer and visual artist, currently based between London and Bologna. Born in Rieti, she first moved to London in 2013 to study. Mungo holds a BA in Fashion Photography from London College of Fashion (University of the Arts of London), and an MA in Photography and Urban Cultures from Goldsmiths University. Her artistic research sits within the framework of visual sociology.
Yu Shuk Pui Bobby (b. 1994) is a visual artist based between Hong Kong and Oslo. With a collaborative approach to her practice, her work conjures the physical, tangible and affective phenomena associated with biotechnology through combinations of video, text, installation, sculpture, and performance. She often uses speculative fiction to tackle questions of human genetic engineering, reconfiguring perceptions of gender, body and historical discourses of identity. Bobby holds a BA from Hong Kong Baptist University and an MFA from Oslo National Academy of Fine Art. Her works have been in Hong Kong, Norway, Japan, China, Iceland and the USA.
Giulia Mangione (b.1987) is an Oslo-based visual artist who works with photography, film and writing. She earned a first MA in Comparative Literary Studies from Goldsmiths University of London, and a second MFA in Fine Arts from the Art Academy in Bergen. She also studied Advanced Visual Storytelling at the Danish School of Media and Journalism in Denmark. Her first book Halfway Mountain, published by Journal in 2018, was selected for the Prix du Livre at Les Rencontres d'Arles and nominated for the MACK First Book Award. Mangione’s work has been exhibited at the International Center of Photography, New York; Musée de l’Élysée, Lausanne; Fotoforum, Bolzano; Fotogalleriet, Oslo; and Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen. She is currently part of the 6th round of the Norwegian Journal of Photography.
Instagram: @giulia_mangione
Website: www.giuliamangione.com
Balázs Szigligeti is a Budapest-based photographer, who studied at The Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design. His work explores the boundaries between reality and fantasy. With a foundation in digital post-processing techniques, he establishes a kind of dreamworld; his artworks celebrate the human body, plasticity, queer culture, his hedonistic friends and life itself.
Instagram: szigligetiphotography
'June', Červeňová’s most recent body of work, is an autobiographical response to the EU referendum. The month of June in 2016 signified a rupture where the meaning of home and future plans were suddenly thrown into limbo. Coinciding with the beginning of her MA at the RCA, she spent the following two years documenting daily life. Taken in various locations across Britain and Europe, each image is titled simply by the location and date in which it is made, the significance of which becomes apparent when read on mass. When viewed in retrospect, the work emerges as not only a record of daily events, but also a timeline of significant dates that will, or have already become, marker points in history.
The core of the work became an artist book, in which the work has been translated into 24 booklets (each representing one month) collated together with an opening ring – a metaphor for the easily breakable union, where the beginning and the end can be manipulated and the linearity of historical events shifted. Červeňová’s artist book 'June' was amongst 10 shortlisted titles in MACK First Book Award 2019 and was presented at Photo London 2019. June is now in the permanent collection of TATE Modern and Victoria & Albert Museum.
In 2019, Červeňová was nominated for the prestigious FOAM Paul Huf Award. She is a 2017 Bloomberg New Contemporaries Alumni. She regularly collaborates with The FT Weekend and Telegraph Magazine.
Noémi Szécsi (b. 1998) is a half-Hungarian, half-Romanian photographer, currently living in Budapest. She studied photography at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest, from which she holds an MA. A member of the Studio of Young Photographers, Hungary, Szécsi’s projects are centred on specific groups of people living on the margins of society – from gravediggers to far-right protesters, to the witches she is currently working with. Her conviction is that the medium of photography offers no universal truths, but it does maintain a mediating and sensitising power. For the artist, the camera is a passport to the places where she interacts with people, allowing her to experience these different positions.
Olga Cafiero (*1982) is a Swiss and Italian photographer based in Lausanne. After a BA in photography and an MA in art direction at ECAL, she studied art history at University of Lausanne. Her work has been shown in exhibitions in Switzerland and internationally since 2008, and regularly published in international magazines since 2009. Her awards include Foam Talent (selection), Hyères Festival de Mode et de Photographie, BFF-Förderpreis (laureate), a Swiss Design Award (laureate) and L’enquête photographique Neuchâteloise (laureate).
Kata Geibl (1989, Budapest) is a photographer living and working in The Hague. Her work is mainly focused on global issues, capitalism, the Anthropocene, and the ambiguities of the photographic medium.
She is currently working on her new series titled There is Nothing New Under the Sun. The series deals with the rampant individualism that underpins our contemporary social, political, and economic system, and in particular, the environmental impact that it has. By juxtaposing the melting glaciers of Dachstein, animals under human control, almost Greek god-like athletes a narrative of our new age unfolds through the images.
Her previous work entitled Sisyphus received international attention, was exhibited at UNSEEN Amsterdam which was followed by her first solo show in Budapest. She received the emerging talent Paris Photo Carte Blanche Award for the series and in the same year she was nominated for Palm* Photo Prize.
In 2019, she received the József Pécsi Photography Scholarship and was a talent for Futures Platform nominated by Capa Center Budapest.
In 2020 she is a Grand Prix Finalist at Fotofestiwal Lodz, won the PHmuseum Vogue Italia Prize and is shortlisted for Palm* Photo Prize.
More: www.katageibl.com
Exploring the boundaries between sculpture and photography, Vincent likes to gets his hands dirty. Among all the wood cut and the nail hammered, what he likes the most is to make you scratch your head. Let’s face it; we all get bored on the internet. Remember those magic hours spent playing with a woodstick when you were just a kids? Vincent is calling that up.
Time at work, this time which rushes, always too short, it is this which Csilla Klenyànszki addresses in her performative and photographic games. Of course, this artistic approach is accepted, being defined by a sum of constraints which might be resumed here as follows: the daily siesta of a child, the domestic setting imposed by this siesta, or thirty minutes for creation. Pillars of Home is a series of variations upon a single theme that is as dizzying as it is absurd. In thirty minutes flat, within this confined frame and with no more than plants, plastic beakers, a vacuum cleaner, table, chair, teapot and other utensils (with the inclusion of her own body, an object which she does not hesitate to contribute and contort), this artist provides ninety-six answers held in a fragile balance between the floor and the ceiling of her apartment. We are amused by one, stunned by another. Yet none of them impose a superiority as, more than just the form, it is the process and the accumulation of experiences which the photographer wishes to highlight: not the beauty of the sculpture nor the skill of its assembly, but the action of an artist who wishes to oppose time with a mischievous and vital fantasy. Ephemeral, yes, but certainly not trivial.
Luciana M. Vulea is a PhD student in Visual Arts and a university assistant at the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Living in a world of images, she draws inspiration from a broad range of imagery and artistic techniques – many of which she integrates into her own practice. As a doctoral student, Vulea’s research examines the insertion of virtuality into the contemporary imaginary. Her role as a university assistant involves teaching 2D and 3D animation to students. Vulea’s work also spans conservation – through the restoration of old photographs – as well as various curatorial activities.
Sanja Bistričić Srića is a Zagreb-based multimedia artist, photographer and cinematographer. Exploring the possibilities of image, sound and text through various media – film, video, photography, collage – her work explores personal themes in a range of diaristic forms. Srića holds a Master’s degree in Animated Film and New Media from the Academy of Fine Arts, Zagreb. Her works and films have been widely exhibited in Croatia and abroad, whilst her images have been published by the likes of Elle, Vice and Interview. She is a co-founder and member of the multidisciplinary collective RA’AH, which explores intersections of fashion, art and music.
As a visual artist I work with photography, text and video. With my work I investigate the relationship between myself and my subject. "The encounter" is a central concept here. In practice I combine a documentary approach with a search for my position as a storyteller. It focuses on a few questions: What is the real topic? Where is the thin line between finding and creating stories? Which (un) conscious strategies do I use as a maker in producing a story?
Currently Simoens is working on a project with his father and painter Richard Simoens.
www.titussimoens.com
For her photographic adventure I am just a scenic spot, Pauline Niks made two long journeys to China, travelling the entire country to photograph so-called landmarks. Her particular focus was on replicas of iconic tourist attractions from other countries, such as the Eiffel Tower and the White House. The idea behind the undertaking was the manipulative nature of documentary photography: it is often seen as a reliable reproduction of reality when in fact it creates its own reality.
www.paulineniks.com
Pavo Marinović (b. 1995) is a photographer and visual artist who lives and works between France, Switzerland and the Balkans. In 2020, he graduated with a BA in Photography from Lausanne’s ECAL. His work has since been shown at Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, Fotomuseum Winterthur, and Paris Photo, amongst others. Traversing fields of identity, conflict, and collective memory through photography, video and installation, Marinović’s practice explores the state of a territory in transit, as well as its social effects.
Naina Helén Jåma (b. 1991) is a south Sami photographer, vytnesjæjjah and storyteller from Snåase, Norway. With an education in photojournalism – she has worked as both a photojournalist and photo editor for various newspapers and news agencies in Norway and Sweden – documentary approaches characterise much of her work. Among others, her images have featured in VG, Aftonbladet, Aftenposten, The New York Times, The Guardian, Huffpost, and Dagens Industri. Jåma is also a member of the Sami Artist Association.
His pictures appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, British Journal of Photography, Internazionale, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times Weekend, Vogue and Vice.
He participated in several exhibitions, including at United Nations (Geneva, Switzerland, 2013) at Venice Biennale of Architecture (Venice, Italy, 2016) and Head On Photo Festival (Sidney, Australia, 2020).
In 2019 he published “Era Mare”, a book about the high water in Venice, whose proceeds went totally to the shopkeepers who needed help.
For his work about Covid-19 Matteo won the REFOCUS award by Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities (Italy) and according to ARTRIBUNE he’s the Best Italian young photographer of 2020.
Having worked for several years in various media as a photojournalist, he made the decision to turn in their work and personal lives mainly developing projects of human and environmental fields.
He is currently also as a photo guide in Iceland, Greenland, Faroe Islands, Norway and Ukraine.
Uzochukwu has previously exhibited at Bozar (BE), Lagos Photo Festival (NG), Off Biennale Dakar (SN), Photo Vogue Festival (IT), and Unseen Amsterdam (NL). He currently studies philosophy in Berlin.