The network

Martyna Benedyka, born in 1991, is a Polish visual artist, vocalist and teacher working in a wide range of media including painting, film and digital photography, collage, installation, and sound art. She studied Art and Design at the Gray’s School of Art in Scotland, UK and graduated with a First Class BA (Hons) degree in Fine Art Painting in 2014. She has exhibited in the UK, Poland, Romania, Italy, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland, Canada and the USA. Her work has been chosen by the Federation of British Artists for the Futures - UK’s largest annual survey of emerging contemporary figurative art at the Mall Galleries, London, among others. She is the recipient of both Polish and British scholarships for her artistic achievements as well as the winner of international residencies and competitions - the latest being the Photo Romania Festival 2022 and De Structura cross-border project 2022-2023, Tallinn, Estonia. Her work is in private and public collections. She specializes in classical music and has performed in many group as well as solo concerts internationally since 2004.

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https://martynabenedyka.com

Lisa Bukreyeva (b. 1993) is a photographer based in Kyiv, Ukraine. Since her journey with photography began in 2019, her works have been presented at a range of museums and festivals, including Photo Elysée, Lausanne; Noorderlicht Festival, Groningen; and Deichtorhallen – Internationale Kunst Und Fotographie, Hamburg. Meanwhile, her images have featured in the likes of Der Spiegel, Zeit, The New York Magazine and Blind Magazine. Bukreyeva is a member of the Burn My Eye collective.

Kwabena Sekyi Appiah-nti (b. 1994) is a Belgian-Ghanaian photographer based in Amsterdam. Straddling the boundaries of documentary and fashion photography, his projects reveal a fascination for people who face societal prejudice, aspiring to cut through the clichés of stereotyped representation. Delving into his subjects’ worlds and observing their behaviours, Appiah-Nti documents their true essence; he describes ‘boyhood’ as the overarching theme in his work.

Klavdia Balampanidou (b.1991) is a Greek photographer based in Nicosia, Cyprus. She studied Audiovisual Arts at the Department of Sound and Visual Arts of the Ionian University. She holds a Master’s degree in History and Theory of Art from the Department of Fine Arts at the Technological University of Cyprus. Her projects explore concepts of personal and collective identity, concepts of belonging, as well as mental health themes. Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions in England, Italy, France, Greece and Cyprus. In 2018, Klavdia received the Young Greek Photographers award from the Hellenic Center of Photography, while in 2021 she was selected as one of the 30 Under 30 Women Photographers by Artpil.

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Dorota Franková is a Czech photographer finishing her studies of photography at the Libuše Jarcovjáková’s studio at the Faculty of Design and Art Ladislav Sutnar in Pilsen. She is engaged in various professions such as social worker in nursing home. In 2022, she devoted a photographic series in a hospice, where she encountered the passing of people to the other side. Here she interviewed dying people and documented their last moments. She has also been working on a documentary about her ailing grandmother for several years. She enjoys fashion photography and loves collaborating with musicians on their album booklets.  A core part of her work is self-reflection and understanding emotional states and their reflection in photography.

Laure Winants is a researcher and field-based visual artist (BE, FR). Winants set up her artist’s studio in the heart of the Arctic ice pack. Embarked on a four-month polar expedition, she joined a team of multidisciplinary researchers to understand the evolution of this vast territory, where man is only a tiny part of life. Immersed in this white desert, she uses techniques developed specifically to capture the optical and luminous phenomena unique to the region. Using environmental sensors, the interaction of matter itself has become the creator of the work, putting human intervention to one side. Laure Winants makes this data tangible and emotionally perceptible, highlighting the interdependence of ecosystems and creating encounters in more-than-human temporalities. In this way, the artist creates a dialogue between art, the natural sciences, and technology.

Laure has exhibited her work internationally in Berlin (DE), Reykjavik (IS), Brussels (BE), Paris (FR), and soon in Stockholm (SE), Luxembourg (LU), and Osaka (JP). Her work has entered the collection of several foundations, such as the Fondation des Arts du Luxembourg and the Palais de Liège (BE).

Maroussia Prignot (BE, 1981) and Valerio Alvarez (BE, 1976) have been doing a collective photographic work since 2015. Their collaboration began on the issue of migration, and more specifically the way in which migrants are received within the Belgian state. Considering that any image is a construction, and not a faithful reproduction of the "reality", their approach is integrative, setting up workshops, joint creation actions, trying to collaborate with those who make their photographs.

The photographers focused on one reception centre, creating links and generating encounters by refusing to submit the refugees to further interrogation or to create stereotypical images of misery. The result of these relationships - nurtured over time - is a series of portraits.

This first project - Here, Waiting - is divided into three photographic forms. Firstly, reportage, showing the physical spaces and the realities of the reception centre. Secondly, portrait workshops were organised with the aid of a studio that was assembled during each visit. The subjects were encouraged to manipulate, colour, distort and obscure the printed images. Finally, self-portraits were taken by the children using photocopy machines – the primary bureaucratic tool of their detention.

The photographs are situated within this relationship: there is neither a sovereign author nor centre of action but instead pictures of varying intensity that allow for multiple impressions and interpretations.

https://nosovereignauthor.be/

Matthieu Croizier (1994) is an artist and freelance photographer based in Lausanne, Switzerland. He graduated from the Photography School of Vevey (CEPV) in 2017 and from the Bachelor Photography at ECAL in 2020.

Using photography as a tool, he tries to turn reality into fantasy, or the other way around, and to blur the line that separates what is considered normal from what is not. In his work, he is mainly interested in the representation of the human body and seeks the tension between opposing notions, as the friction from beauty to ugly, from fascination to repulsion or from ordinary to spectacular. He is one of the laureates of the Carte Blanche Students 2020, organized by Paris Photo, Picto Foundation and SNCF Gare & Connexions.

Verdiana Albano (*1993) is an Afro-European artist based in Frankfurt and Hamburg. Throughout her studies at the University of Arts and Design Offenbach until 2021, she specialized in photography and installation art. Supported by the DAAD, she studied and lived in Chongqing, China, in 2019, where she created the series "surrounded," which is now part of the Art Collection Deutsche Börse. 

Her works and engagement has been marked by accolades, including the Bayern Innovativ’s Junge Kunst und Neue Wege Stipendium, and grants like the Neustart Kultur Stipend 2022 and Neustart Plus Stipend 2023 from Stiftung Kunstfonds. Albano's works have been showcased in both solo and group exhibitions nationwide and internationally. She premiered her first solo exhibition through the ISO 5000 Prize 2021 of Hans and Annemarie Weidmann Foundation. In 2023 she was part of Les Rencontres de la Photographie d'Arles at the Fondation Manuel Rivera-Ortiz.

Albano's influence extends beyond her art, as she has been an invited guest at the German-British Democracy Forum, and held talks for the Hertie Foundation and the BARCAMP of the German Foreign Office. In 2023, she started to establish an Afro-European artist network, leveraging her Allianz Foundation Fellowship to foster collaboration within the artistic community.

Hilla Kurki was born in Anjalankoski, Finland. She has graduated with Master’s in Art from Aalto University, Finland. Kurki was awarded the Still Life prize in the latest edition of Festival d'Hyères. Her work was showcased in Elles X Paris Photo (2018), highlighting female photographers. She lives and works in Helsinki, Finland.

In my ongoing series I photograph myself in dialogue with my late sister’s dresses. Through performative acts and self-portraiture I address the complex process of grief and healing after my sister passed away seven years ago. As a part  of this self-recovery, I am leaning to my family’s legacy of rug-making; the cutting of clothes of the deceased to weft. In my family what could not be used was remodelled, deconstructed and reconstructed, as a form of pragmatic exorcism. And by cutting, sewing and weaving I am working through the dresses, taking back authority of my fate.

Essential in my work is the juxtaposition of a living body and the materiality of textiles. The images portray a play between seeing and touch, the form and the tactility. Using my body and the dresses of my sister I examine the relationship of memories and materialities. Can objects harbor emotions? And can one access these enclosed emotions by intervening with their materiality? In the past years these works have become a tool of finding my identity in the world. The combination of the female nude and the aggressive act of cutting have grown to represent liberation from far more than just grief.

David Bakarić Mihaljević, born in 2001. In Zagreb, is an undergraduate student of cinematography at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb. With ambitions of completing a master's degree in photography at the academy, David has had three solo exhibitions and participated in five group exhibitions. One of these, named "So Far," he organized himself with the help of his colleagues and friends. Besides photography, and prior to attending the Academy, David filmed two experimental documentaries. His film, "From You I Am Happy," was shown in the non-competition program at the Zg Dox festival.

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Trained as a speech therapist and a self-taught photographer, Aurélie Scouarnec (1990) has recently exhibited her series Anaon as part of Itinéraires des photographes voyageurs, Espace Saint-Rémi, Bordeaux (2018), at the Rencontres photographiques du Xe arrondissement de Paris (2017), and the Nuits photographiques de Pierrevert (2017).

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.

Pauline Beugnies was born in Charleroi in 1982. She works on long-term personal photography projects. Recently, she start writing and directing films. She also works as a photojournalist for the press. She lived in Cairo for five years and studied Arabic there.

Pauline is focusing on the Arab and the Islamic world, trying to build bridges and to go beyond stereotypes. Her first book Génération Tahrir was published by Le Bec éditions in January 2016. She was the second recipient of the Camille Lepage award in Perpignan Visa pour l’Image festival in 2016.

Her latest project, "Behind The Sun", mixing photos, videos and documents was exhibited at BPS22 in 2018. Recently, she start writing and directing films. Her first documentary film "Lessa Aichin"(Still Alive) was selected at FIFF, Dok Leipzig and nominated at Magrittes du Cinema in 2018.

www.paulinebeugnies.com

Yana Kononova (b. 1977) has an academic background in social sciences, and holds a PhD in sociology. She was born on Pirallahi island in the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan – now an important site of oil extraction. During the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, her family emigrated to Ukraine. Having later relocated to the countryside of the Trachtemiriv peninsula, Kononova turned to photography. She graduated from the Photoschool of Viktor Marushchenko before following a photography course organised by the Image Threads Collective (USA). In 2019, Kononova won the Bird in Flight Prize in emerging Photography, and in 2022 was the recipient of the Hariban Award, presented by Benrido. Her works have been exhibited in Ukraine and abroad.

Allyssa Heuze (b. 1994) is a graduate of the École de l’image des Gobelins. She has exhibited as part of the festival Circulation(s) her series OÏ at the gallery Madé (2018) and she took part in the group exhibition CO-OP at the fair Unseen Amterdam (2017).

Browsing through Allyssa Heuze’s photographs is, one rapidly remarks, like taking one path and unexpectedly finding oneself on another. A slide leads us to a pair of buttocks encircled by a hoop, a baseball player hits a home run which leads us to two small breasts drawn by the shadowed outline of two plump apples, and even to those gazed upon by another young man, his head submerged beneath a t-shirt. References to play punctuate Allyssa Heuze’s labyrinthine journey between her images: ball games, gymnastics, role play. This photographer’s preferred terrain is the studio, where she seems to take pleasure in constructing her dramas and her absurd scenarios. Herein this white cube willingly yields, where one may make believe that the real, the duration of the photographic shot, has no hold. She invites her friends within, a banana and doughnuts, an erupting volcano, and an aeroplane vulva in an inventory that is all the more burlesque as it is presented through a precise, almost clinical, photographic vocabulary. A balanced light, controlled reflections, a careful composition: together they hold all of the attributes of a style with a perfect appearance that this photographer – who certainly knows all of its rules – takes pleasure in making slip.

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.

Pablo Lerma is a Spanish research-based artist, educator and publisher based in Amsterdam (The Netherlands).

His work has been exhibited at Photoforum Pasquart (CH), Copeland Gallery (UK), IHLIA Heritage (NL), Deli Gallery (US), FOTODOK (NL), PhotoEspaña (ES), The Finnish Museum of Photography (FI), Flowers Gallery (US), Konstanet (EE), Centro Huarte (ES), New York University (US), Fotoweek D.C. (US), SCAN International Festival of Photography (ES), La Fábrica (ES), and Fundació Foto Colectania (ES) among others. His publications are in collections including the Guggenheim Museum (US), Museum of Modern Art – MoMA (US), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art - SFMoMA (US), Aeromoto (MX), Centro de la Imagen (MX), School of the Art Institute of Chicago (US), and the International Center of Photography in New York (US), among others. He has been awarded with the Cherryhurst House Fellowship MFA Houston (US), Grand Prize of Curators Award PDN (US), Fundació Guasch-Coranty (ES) and Sala d’Art Jove (ES). He has been selected for Pla(t)form FotoMuseum Winterthur (CH) and nominated for the First Book Award MACK Editions (UK), Critical Mass (US), and PDN 30’s (US). His work has been featured on Trigger FOMU (BE), Lens Culture (US), Photomonitor (UK), Unseen Platform (NL), British Journal for Photography (UK), Ain’t Bad Magazine (US), New York Foundation for the Arts (US), PDN Online (US) and PhotoInter China (CH).

Karolina Gembara is a photographer and researcher whose work revolves around  themes such as home, belonging, migration, and practices of care. Much of her recent  activity has been devoted to politics and activism. She uses photography and video as  tools and pretexts for collaboration, fostering creative processes.  

In 2013, she published her debut book "Fitting Rooms," which examines the role of  women in her generation. Between 2009 and 2016, Karolina was based in India, where  she produced her second book "When We Lie Down, Grasses Grow From Us,"  exploring the migratory experience (published by GOST Books in 2019). She is an  editor of several Strike Newspapers published by the Archive of Public Protest.  

In recent years, she has initiated and completed several participatory projects involving  refugees, creating spaces for collaboration and self-expression.  

Karolina is currently working on her Ph.D. dissertation (K. Kieślowski Film School), which centers around the subjective narratives of historical migrations. She is a member of Sputnik Photos and the A-P-P

Armando Perna (Reggio Calabria, 1981) is a documentary photographer. Since 2013 he has been involved in a long term research focused on the process of militarization and compartmentalization of space seen as a result of practices rooted in the history of the Lebanese civil war, when Beirut was fragmented into well delineated territories each controlled by a sectarian militia. Armando Perna looks to what anthropologists call “prohibited spaces”: urban sites that were originally public and became “private”, inaccessible and out of reach for the majority of the population, because of the war and the urban renewal projects.

In 2013 his project “A3_Sa-Rc” is shortlisted for the architekturbild - European Prize for Architectural photography - (DAM, German museum of Architecture, Frankfurt ). Selected exhibitions: Museum of Estonian Architecture, KazimKuba, Kassel (2014); Vhs photogalerie, Stuttgart; International tag der Architektur, Vilnius; DAM, German Museum of Architecture, Frankfurt, GER (2013).

In 2014 the first version of his book project “Dahiye” is shortlisted for the fotobookfestival dummy award (Kassel, Germany). Selected exhibitions: Athens Photo Festival, The Photobook Museum, Cologne; PhotoIreland, Dublin, MIA Image Art Fair, Milan; Fotogaleriet, Oslo; Le Bal, Paris; Fotoleggendo, Rome (2014). In the same year Armando Perna joins the “Third Island Ag ’64 ’94 ’14” a research project dedicated to the promotion of an interdisciplinary and historical reflection on large-scale infrastructures in Italy curated by Antonio Ottomanelli. In this frame he presents “A3_Sa-Rc”, his work on the Southern Italy A3 Sa-Rc highway. “The Third Island” is published in 2016 by Planar books, and exposed at the Triennale Museum in Milan and at Palazzo Poli in Rome.

In 2017 his work on Dahiye and Shatila is presented at Pino Pascali Museum of Polignano a Mare (BA).