Since 2008 she is based in Spain where she works as a freelance photojournalist, combining her personal projects with the teaching of photography. She has published in BuzzFeed News, El Pais, XL Semanal, L'Obs, Equal Times, 5W magazine, Interviú, El Periódico de Cataluña, 7k magazine, Gazeta Wyborcza and Polityka among others.
Her projects address discrimination and societal dysfunctions in western society. She also works on youth radicalization and the raise of right-wing movements in Europe. Lately she has started to investigate the construction of national identity in post-Soviet regions in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
She has won different awards, such as the Third Prize in POY Latam 2015 (Mexico); she has been awarded with the Grant Programa Crisálidas Signo Editores Grant 2019 (Spain), with a Helge Humelvoll Scholarship (USA 2017) and with the “Photojournalism Grant 2015” (GrisArt International School of Photography, Barcelona), among others.
Finalist of the Grand Press Photo 2019 and 2012 in Poland and of the 19th FotoPres la Ciaxa (2013); she was also nominated in 2018 and 2017 Edition of Photography Magazine Grant (London). She has participated in festivals such as PhotOn 2019 and 2018 (Spain), Imaginaria 2019 (Spain), UCL Festival of Culture in London (2017), FOTONOVIEMBRE Tenerife (2015) and the VIII Biennal de Xavier Miserachs (2014) among others.
Oxiea Villamonte (b. 1995) was born in the USA and raised in the Netherlands. She holds both a BA and MFA in Photography from The Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. Shortly after graduating, her book – Next of Kin – was published by Stockmans Art Books. Through self-portraits and archival material, the project presents the artist’s search for identity in Chicago, where her mother spent her formative years. More recently, Villamonte embarked on a 10-month journey through America by Amtrak, guided by photographs from her parents’ archive. Her work is highly personal, guided by a fascination with identity, and with the legacy of her upbringing in the choices she makes.
Michał Patycki (b. 1995) is a Polish visual artist based in Czechia. He holds a BA in Creative Photography from the Silesian University in Opava. In his artistic practice, Patycki often applies both photography and other forms of visual art. Photography gives him the opportunity to approach unknown realities, which he can work through with the resulting image. The strength of his work comes first and foremost from its authenticity; each subject he tackles is examined thoroughly through in-depth research – searching in each instance for a suitable method of self-expression. Patycki often works with photographic archives, and plays with stories that may or may not have happened at all. His works have been exhibited in Poland and abroad.
Panagiotis Papoutsis studied photography, business administration and has a master’s degree in Cultural Management with specialisation in Photography Festivals. He has co-founded the Photometria International Photography Festival. As a photographer and manager of culture, he has organized numerous cultural events and photo exhibitions in Europe and has been invited to give lectures and view portfolios at several European photo festivals.
Her work is dominated by authentic recording of everyday situations with poetic- geometric narrative overlaps. The themes touch on temporality, imagination, fiction, and the search for new image contexts (re-evalution of image). Unformal documentary images are diversfield with abstract or stylized „cut-outs“ of the everyday colors. ". The conscious disruption of the timeline opens up the possibility of individual interpretation, which the viewer can understand as he or she wishes - without time constraints. Barbora in last years is interested in the relationship between static image and the moving image. Her inspiration often comes from eastern Slovakia,personal experience, the theme of growing up and aging, home, landscape,spending leisure time and health care.
She has participated in joint exhibition projects in France, Germany, Slovakia, Czech Rupublic and others. She participated in Pla(t)form 2020 in the Swiss Fotomuseum Winterthur, where she was selected along with 42 artists. Barbora Bacova actually lives and works in Košice.
I started off with photography on a late age, because I have a history of pro-basketball player. I decided to go back and study after I quit basketball. After a stop at RITS Drama school in Brussels I started to study photography at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) in Ghent where I got my bachelor in Photography.
I have an undeniable curiosity and hunger for both small and large, well-known and less well-known stories. I use my camera as a key to enter a world or to make any contact. It gives me a fly on the wall feeling, with which I can experience a tranche de vie for a while. I always try to approach my subject as objectively as possible and let my eye do the work.
Photography helps me to understand certain facets of life in a better way.
I've always been attracted to uncommon subjects and stories, which aren't mainstream and easy to approach.
Xenia Petrovska (b. 1988) is a photographer based in Kyiv, Ukraine. She studied at the MYPH art school and at the Kyiv School of Photography. Xenia's works are rooted in the mysterious and even slightly surreal atmospheres created by light and color. She took part in numerous group exhibitions in Ukraine in Europe. Xenia was selected as a Fresh Eyes European talent 2021 by GUP Magazine. Member of Ukrainian Women Photographers Organisation.
Luiza Marinas (b.1987) is a Romanian photographer, whose work merges elements of fine art, conceptual photography, portraiture, documentary photography and travel photography. Travel was her entry point into the discipline; for Marinas, photographing other cultures offered a means to better understand herself. She photographed people and places in Romania, Mongolia, Nepal, Argentina, India, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Jordan, Iceland and Greenland, before later turning to the world of fine art and conceptual photography. Her photographs have been published by the likes of Blur Magazine, National Geographic and Vogue Italia, whilst her work has featured in several exhibitions in Romania and abroad.
A common thread throughout his practice is an interest in the metaphorical potential of photographs. His project, ‘John’s Notebooks’ (2020-2021), pulls on the symbolism present with the landscape of the home to touch on the emotions and memories connected to the childhood loss of his father. Whereas his most recent work ‘Murmurations’ (2020-21), employs the starling murmuration as a symbol to reflect on the current global crisis and the act of coming together and converging as a group.
Barraclough is a recent graduate of the MA Photography programme at Bristol UWE and is due to exhibit his master’s project, ‘John’s Notebooks’, at the 2021 Bristol Photo Festival.
For Sine Van Menxel, photography is the art of manipulating light and shadow. Since she works exclusively with black-and-white analogue photography, Van Menxel encounters the problem of light and shadow twice: first, in the moment of shooting and secondly when printing the final image in the darkroom. In both cases, she is fascinated by the possibilities and the limits of photographic technique in terms of manipulation and reproduction. While the moment of shooting mainly concerns the receiving and measuring of light, the work in the darkroom is a far more engaging moment: it is the phase where the photographer manipulates the projected light to create the final image. Although Van Menxel sometimes intervenes before taking a shot – for example, by staging the scene – the real challenges only arise in the second phase of the photographic process. For her, the darkroom is first and foremost an experimental environment where fortuitous discoveries occur and playful ideas are tried out. The tools that surround her (such as the magnets used for keeping the photographic paper flat against the wall) can transform from mere accessories to active agents in the creation of new and surprising images. Van Menxel often chooses not to retouch the prints, instead accepting the traces (specks of dust, stains, etc.) left behind on the image by the labour in the darkroom. The lucky coincidences created by a “failing” system alert the viewer to the image’s technological origin, thereby allowing Van Menxel to question the transparency of the medium. As such, her work is less about the subjects immediately visible in her images than about the visual possibilities created by exploiting and /or subverting the photographic method. Her work ensues from a sensitive alternation of action and surrender, of control and the loss of it. The result is a set of witty images made by a mischievous eye that is able to extract visual surprises from the most mundane situations.
Text by Steven Humblet
Aurélie Scouarnec created her series, Anaon, in the monts d’Arrée, in the Finistère region of Brittany. It is a delicate exploration on what she calls “the margins of the visible” in this legendary land. Inspired by the texts of Anatole Le Braz and François-Marie Luzel, she undertook a photographic investigation, in search of the rites and ancient tales amongst this rocky mountain range. Gateway to hell, according to some beliefs, here she crosses the phantom presence of several animals, called psychopomps, in charge of escorting souls in the kingdom of the dead. In other places, she plays with the syncretism particular to this hilly land and combines in a single stroke veiled female silhouettes – immediately associated with Christianity – and monumental woodland silhouettes, places of pagan worship. The abyssal green of moss and the deep black of the night are at times awoken by the cry of the moon and the animals perhaps surprised by the movement of these heavy fabrics. Stories read, heard, relics of ancient rites and forms of contemporary druidism, all are invited here to take their place in this phantasmagoric narrative which Aurélie Scouarnec constructs, photograph after photograph.
Her photography has appeared in National Geographic, der Spiegel, Newsweek China, Die Zeit, and many others. For her photography she was awarded with the Inge Morath award, received the VG-Bild award and won the Lotto Brandenburg Prize and many more. She has exhibited worldwide in countries like Australia, France, Germany, Switzerland - as well as China, Iceland, Ukraine and the US.
Giulia Parlato (b.1993) is an Italian visual artist based in London and Palermo.
She graduated from the BA (Hons) Photography at London College of Communication in 2016 and from the MA Photography at the Royal College of Arts in 2019.
Her practice delves into histories, myths and cultural heritage, involving photography and video. She analyses the historical use of photography as a document of truth, specifically in its scientific and forensic uses, and challenges this language, by creating a new space in which staged scenes take place. The melancholic and frustrating state, caused by humans’ impossibility to understand the past constitutes the foundation of her work.
Giulia’s work is shown nationally and internationally in group and solo exhibitions including Podbielski Contemporary Gallery (Milan, 2021), Photo London Fair (London, 2020), Photo Fringe (Brighton, 2020), Palazzo Rasponi 2 (Ravenna, 2020), Galleria Cavour for Photo Open Up (Padova, 2020), Gare Du Nord for Paris Photo (Paris 2019), Kunstgebaude for Soft Power Palace Festival (Stuttgart, 2018); and featured extensively in printed and online publications. She is the recipient of the BJP International Photography Award (2021), the Innovate Grant (2020), Camera Work Award (2020) and the Carte Blanche Éstudiants Award (2019).
Talks and Commissions include Paris Photo, The Photographers' Gallery, Cambridge School of Visual & Performing Arts, and Art Licks.
She is a founder member of Ardesia Projects, a curatorial platform dedicated to contemporary photography, and of the Carte Blanche Collective.
Giulia's work is held in public and private collections.
Andi Galdi Vinko is an internationally acclaimed artist working in photography. She studied photography at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest and at Esag Penninghen in Paris, as well as art history and aesthetics at ELTE University in Budapest. Her work draws visual analogies between intensely personal and intimate experiences of motherhood, womanhood, and universal human experiences of coming of age, ageing, loss, and the conflict between western and eastern European ideologies. Using both staged and documentary photography, Andi is a vivid visual storyteller who assembles her snapshots and studio photos into unconventional and unexpected narratives, juxtapositions that are playful and humorous but also elicit pathos and absurdity. Her photographs are both empowering and intimate at the same time and are often published in the form of zines or editorials. She also works as a director and member of Kinopravda.tv. Andi GV has been published and commissioned by M Le Monde, Die Zeit, i-D, Dazed, Vice, The New Yorker, Tate etc, Vogue.it among others. Her personal work has been exhibited internationally in group and solo shows. Recent exhibitions include: “Birth” at TJ Boulting, London; “Variations of Reality, Circulations” at Fetart, MAC, Paris; “Golden Boundaries”, Robert Capa Center, Budapest. Her first book “Sorry I Gave Birth I Disappeared But Now I’m Back” will be published by Trolley Books in 2022.
In her works she often focuses on issues connected with migration or its destiny. She is mostly interested in the problematic of constructing identity and how people define themselves and the land of their origins. Recently she is involved in collective photographic research about polish migration to South America. It happens that she gets out of the material world and enters other dimensions of perceiving the world, exploring the paranormal events and believes not connected with any religious system. Finds collective creation as the best way for making photography as permanent process of putting individual thoughts in doubts.
She was born in 1990 by the Polish seaside in Gdańsk. Graduated in Photography on Academy of Arts in Poznań. She is also part of Ostrøv publishing collective.
Ioanna Sakellaraki (b.1989) is a Greek visual artist and researcher. Her work investigates the relationship between collective cultural memory and fiction. Drawing emphasis on the photographic object, process and encounter, she explores the boundaries of a primitive, yet futuristic vision of places and people. She was recently awarded a Doctoral Scholarship for undertaking her PhD in Art after graduating from an MA Photography from the Royal College of Art. She is the recipient of The Royal Photographic Society Bursary Award 2018 and was named Student Photographer of the Year by Sony World Photography Awards 2020. In 2019, she was awarded with the Reminders Photography Stronghold Grant in Tokyo and the International Photography Grant Creative Prize. Nominations include: the Inge Morath Award by Magnum Foundation in USA, the Prix HSBC, the Prix Levallois and the Prix Voies Off in France. Her work has been exhibited internationally in art festivals and galleries with a recent solo show at the European Month of Photography in Berlin. Her projects have been featured in magazines such as The New Yorker and journals including The Guardian and Deutsche Welle. Her first monograph ‘The Truth is in the Soil’ is published by GOST Books.
The polish photographer Natalia Kepesz (*1983) lives and works in Berlin. After studying cultural studies and art history at the Humboldt University in Berlin, she graduated in 2021 with a degree in photography at the Ostkreuzschule Berlin. Since 2016 she has been working as a freelance photographer. She is a member of bbk Berlin, VG Bild and Women Photograph.
Natalia Kepesz got third place in the World Press Photo Contest 2021 (Portrait Series). She also won the residency prize in the Portraits Hellerau Photography Award 2021, Les Jour Prix at Les Boutographies - recontres photographiques de Montpellier 2021 and was named GUP Fresheyes Talent 2021, among others.
Her works have been exhibited at the Belfast Photo Festival, Helsinki Photo Festival, Festspielhaus Hellerau Dresden, Münzenberg Forum Berlin, Noorderlicht Photo Festival and the World Press Exhibition Foto Tour, among others.
In 2020 Erien Withouck’s fascination for overlooked figures and myths led her to the Shetland Isles. Several islanders told her of the mythical “Selkie”, a hybrid creature which has the ability to remove its seal skin and take on human form. On Midsummer’s eve, a female Selkie emerges from a foaming sea and sheds her seal skin. A man sees her on the shore: he carelessly steals her skin and makes her his wife. Always longing for the ocean, the Selkie prefers the freedom as a seal to her expected role as a good mother and housewife, she eventually reclaims her skin and returns to her former home.
This myth is the sort of transient tale that chimes with Withouck’s aesthetic and sensibility. The antagonism between the fleeting nature of oral history and the desire to capture things permanently on film raises an important question: what do we wish to remember, and what would we rather forget? A literal reconstruction of the past is neither useful nor appropriate. The camera offers the chance to play, to intersect the paths of history and imagination.
Her photographs illuminate the traces of these unknown figures and mythical creatures which escaped the pages of history books, subtly capturing the unwritten habits, routines and cultures that still slumber on in remote communities. In scenes that beautifully evoke the fisherman’s world of pounding waves and craggy cliffs, the sea – with its continuous ebb and flow between eternity and fluidity – is clearly the protagonist. This ambiguity is exposed in the imagery of Erien Withouck.
- Text by Dagmar Dirkx (.tiff)
Her work is centred around reworkings of historical tropes relating to the black female body, taking from contexts that include art historical paintings and sculptures as well as 19th century colonial photography. She works to subvert established notions about black female sexuality and the standard of beauty ascribed to black females. By placing historical imagery in a contemporary context, the relationship between the treatment of the black female body in the past and its treatment in the present day is explored. Since graduating from Edinburgh College of Art with a BA (Hons) in Photography, she has been a recipient of the SSA New Graduate Award and the Degree Show Purchase Prize, resulting in her work becoming part of The University of Edinburgh Art Collection.
He has published several books with his photographic series. His work is held in a number of private collections nationally and internationally. In 2019, Andrii Dostliev was awarded the 3rd prize at the II Ukrainian Biennale of Young Art for his project examining the mythologization of memories of a territory lost due to a military conflict.
Róbert Nunkovics (1993) examines the relational systems of urban life, exploring naive artistic attempts appearing in public spaces, graffiti, and the acts of their reception through the medium of photography and video. In his own images, he presents urban space as various, freely usable surfaces for artistic creation. He sensitively combines research-based mediums - objects, memories, drawings, or collective photography - with works coming from his own observations, delicately examining the issues of our environment and social groups.
Her practice works with photography, collage and installation, often experiments with the medium. She mainly explores topics of identity, personal freedom and systems of oppressions. In her life and work, she questions existing rules and binding canons. Sejud’s main inspirations are daily life, vulgarity, ugliness, dreams and visions.
Maria Leonardo Cabrita lives and works in Lisbon, where she is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Fine Arts. She holds an MFA in Multimedia Art from the University of Fine Arts, Lisbon; a Diploma in Photography from the Art Academy of Munich; and a BFA/BA in Sculpture from the Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon. Cabrita’s practice engages a range of subjects, from history and science to other non-artistic practices. She often seeks to question the nature of photography, inverting the relationship between the referent and the referenced, and between what’s seen and what’s perceived. Her current project questions the interconnectivity between optical mirages, images and the act of seeing. Her works have been exhibited throughout Europe and beyond.