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.
The work of Eline Benjaminsen (NO, 1992) studies the lacking visuality of socioeconomic processes and how this effects our ability to engage with them. She deals with the challenge of perceiving market processes through photographic follow-the-money narratives that combine prints, video and text in mixed media installations.
In 2017 she graduated from the Royal Academy of Art The Hague (Department of Photography) with the project Where the money is made - Surfaces of algorithmic capital about the infrastructure of algorithmic stock trading. The project was awarded the Steenbergen Stipendium (2017) and was nominated for the Zilveren Camera category Prijs voor Storytelling (2018) along multiple other nominations. She collaborates with a variety of platforms, from museums and galleries to the financial press.
The latest exhibits of her work include Stroom (NL), FOTODOK (NL), Lianzhou Foto Festival (CN), Heden (NL) and Krakow Photomonth (PL).
Sergey Melnitchenko was born in 1991 in Mykolayiv, Ukraine. Started photography in 2009. In 2018 – founder of school of conceptual and art photography MYPH. Member of UPHA – Ukrainian Photo Alternative. In recent years, he has participated in more than 100 solo and group exhibitions around the world. Winner of Ukrainian and international contests including “Leica Oskar Barnack Award Newcomer” in 2017 (Berlin), “Photographer of the Year” in 2012, 2013 and 2016 (Kyiv, Ukraine), “Golden Camera” in 2012 (Kyiv, Ukraine). Shortlisted for Krakow Photomonth in 2013 and Pinchuk Art Center Prize in 2015, among others. Participant of “Paris Photo”, “Volta Art Fair”, “Photo L.A.”, Photo Basel, etc. Nominated on “Foam Paul Huf Award” in 2020. Sergey’s works are in private and public collections in USA, Hong Kong, Ukraine, Russia, Poland, France, Germany, Belgium, Lithuania and Czech Republic.
Agata is working as a freelance photojournalist and a cinematographer. Her work has been published in DER SPIEGEL, Stern, DIE ZEIT, SZ-Magazin, The Guardian, ARTE TV, ARD, NZZ, DUMMY Magazine, Greenpeace Magazine, Taz, BuzzFeed, Free Mens World, Spiegel Online, Zenith, SPIEGEL WISSEN, Politiken, Zeit Online, Gazeta Wyborcza, Newsweek.
Agata's projects have been supported by numerous grants, including: the Magnum Foundation, the Pulitzer Center, Journalismfund.eu, Robert Bosch Stiftung and VG Bild-Kunst.
Brahim Tall (b. 1993) is a Brussels-based artist. Of Belgian, Dutch and Senegalese heritage, his practice studies the politics and expression of identity, as well as paying homage to nightlife and underground culture. With a BA from LUCA School Of Arts, Tall’s works combine photography with video, installation and elements of performance. Where his BA graduation project, Untitled, questioned his sense of identity as an artist, his later Tukuleur project – reflecting on the experience of coming from an ethnically-mixed household – took the form of a video.
By combining personal photographs with found imagery and hand-made collages with 3d printing processes, Giovanna creates imaginary landscapes inspired by surrealist paintings virtual realities and ancient cultures. Influenced by museum displays and catalogues, Giovanna populates these landscapes with her own collection of surreal artefacts. The received view of ancient objects is deliberately distorted. A recurrent feature of her work is the juxtaposition of futuristic and primordial scenarios and the combination of historical and fictional elements.
Alba received prizes in the Tokyo International Photography Competition (Japan, 2017), Landskrona Foto Festival (Sweden, 2017), Flash Forward UK (Canada, 2016) and Zona C Visual Artist Awards (Spain, 2015). He was a finalist for the Best Photobook of the Year Award by PHotoEspaña (Spain, 2020), the GetxoPhoto Festival (Spain, 2019), the BMW Art & Culture (France, 2017), Encontros da Imagem (Portugal, 2016), Grand Prix Fotofestiwal (Poland, 2016) and the Descubrimientos PHotoEspaña Award (Spain, 2015). His work has been exhibited at various galleries and museums worldwide, most recently at the Lianzhou Museum of Photography (China, 2021), Hayward Gallery (London, 2019), the Tokyo International Photography Competition (TIPC) (Japan, 2018), Singapore International Photography Festival (Singapore, 2018), Landskrona Foto (Landskrona, 2018), Format Photography Festival (Derby, UK, 2017), Auditorio de Galicia (Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 2017), La Fábrica Gallery (Madrid, Spain, 2016), Fotofestiwal Art_Inkubator (Lódź, Poland, 2016), PHotoEspaña (Madrid, Spain, 2016), Circulation(s) festival (Paris, France, 2016) DOCfield Barcelona festival at Arts Santa Mònica (Spain, 2016), Bitume Photofest (Lecce, Italy, 2016), and MOMus-Thessaloniki Museum of Photography (Greece, 2016). His monographs, ‘The Taste of The Wind’ (2019) and ‘The Observation of Trifles’ (2016), are part of collections in institutions such as Tate Library (UK), Harvard Library (USA), Deck (Singapore), The Library Project (Ireland), Lightbox Photography Library (Taiwan), Reminders Photography Stronghold (RPS) (Japan), Fundación Foto Colectanica (Spain), and Landskrona Museum (Sweden).
www.carlosalba.com
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.
Jacopo Valentini (1990) lives between Modena and Milan. In 2017, he graduated in Architecture at the Mendrisio Academy of Architecture and obtained an MA in Photography at the IUAV in Venice. In the same year he won the “101st Collective Young Artists” at the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation.
He has been selected for Giovane Fotografia Italiana #07, Fotografia Europea Festival - Reggio Emilia, and he won the Nocivelli Award (2019). In 2020 he is a finalist for the Leica Oskar Barnack Award Newcomer and winner of the Refocus Prize, powered by Triennale and Mufoco in Milan. In the same year Valentini won Cantica21 grant, developing the project Concerning Dante - Autonomus Cell research, published by Humboldt Books.
Valentini work has been exhibited in institutions and private spaces both in Italy and abroad, including: La Triennale di Milano, L. Pecci Center for Contemporary Art, Museo Fattori, Royal Institute British of Architecture, Fabbri Foundation, Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation, Ragghianti Foundation, Civic Gallery of Modena, Italian Cultural Institute of Addis Ababa, Italian Cultural Institute-Moscow.
https://jacopovalentini.it/
Dafni Melidou (b. 1990, Greece) is a visual artist whose multidisciplinary practice combines research, photography, writing and multi-media experimentation. Coming from a scientific background her working and research methods are versatile, and she approaches her projects from many angles. She works with her own photographs, found images, tactile materials and smells, often re-appropriated and constructed into new constellations, shapes or forms.
Melidou's experimental works start with her daily encounters of events in the mass media and her personal observations. Her themes center around gender and social injustices, the complexities of representation and our conflicting perception of reality. A common thread in her work is the understanding of materiality and the physical world in a digital age. Her fascination lies with creating non-conclusive and often confusing stories that call for an open interpretation and invite the viewers to re-think dominantmedia narratives.
Melidou holds a B.A. in Chemistry, a M.Sc. in Food Science and she is currently pursuing her Master's degree in Photography & Society at The Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK). In 2021 she co-founded cartographydigest.com, an experimental visual platform aiming to stretch the boundaries of photography and map new territories. She is currently based between Rotterdam and Athens.
Florian Amoser (1990), lives and works in Olten. Florian graduated in 2017 with honors from ECAL in photography. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from ETH Zurich (2011). After working for the last five years in the BA and MA Photography at ECAL as well as conducting the research project Automated Photography (with Milo Keller, Claus Gunti), he is now focussing on his personal artistic practice. Florian is also part of the curation team of annual young art show JKON / Junge Kunst Olten. Florian Amoser’s works explore the different aspects of human perception. Since photography’s invention, human beings use it as an instrument to expand the limits of their observational capacity. Consequently, the technological development of the photographic apparatus has a significant influence on our perception. Florian Amoser builds his own original tools for his artistic works, which make new photographic images possible. His photographs bear witness to a material dissolution of the environment in which the view of physical reality is strongly influenced by experiences in digital space.
In 2015 she graduated in Cultural Studies from the Higher School of Economics (Moscow) and in 2019 she completed the course Experiences of Contemporary Photography at Docdocdoc School of Contemporary Photography (St. Petersburg). Exhibitions include: In the N apartment, all tricks are taken seriously, ZGA Gallery, St. Petersburg (2019); MoS Photo Prize, Art of Omsk City Museum (2019); Young Artists That Oksana Budulak and Sanya Zakirov Liked This Winter, Ploshchad Mira Museum Center, Krasnoyarsk (2020); and Young Photographers of Russia 2020, Innovative Cultural Center, Kaluga; Exhibition Hall, Tula (2020), Assuming the Distance: Speculations, Fakes and Predictions in the Age of the Coronacene (Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow). She is a winner of The Calvert Journal Makers of Siberia Special Jury Prize (2019), the New East Photo Prize (2020), and the competition Krakow Show OFF at Photography Month in Krakow (2021). She lives and works in Moscow.
In our work, we explore the result of the interplay between previous and present generations, between the crew and the entertainment we provide for the locals in the places where we shoot. We use tools like traditional film photography, performance, and mixed media, operating at the interface between non-traditional documentary and marginalized fashion photography, in the contemporary environment.
Once a year we put people of our generation in conditions where they intensely experience the conflict between the cultural wealth we inherit from previous generations and the new international, material, spiritual values that impact us in the modern world. Reconciling and integrating this conflict allows us to move on culturally and spiritually and to reveal hidden aspects of life in Ukraine.
After having displayed her work for the first time at Plat(t)form 2015, held at the Fotomuseum in Winterthur (Switzerland), she was asked to display her work on the occasion of the Fotopub Festival in Novo Mesto (Slovenia) and at Circulation(s) in Paris. In 2015, she was shortlisted for the Francesco Fabbri Prize for her work Lay Out. Over the last year and a half, she has concentrated exclusively on her own personal research, focusing on the creation of new series and projects. Se has been selected for Fotografia Europea 2017. Since 2016 she has been represented by Viasaterna.
She takes a colourful, chaotic approach to subjects like childhood, education and love. In her works, images of empty classrooms are interspersed with ones of student activities, learning tools and visualizations of discipline and uniformity that as children we were likely not aware of.
My name is Oscar Scott Carl, i’m 26 years old. I finished my bachelor programme in photojournalism in April 2021 at DMJX in Aarhus, Denmark. Photography is for me an exploration of the question why? Through photography I try to understand and comprehend. I believe that my pictures are visual footsteps in my search for understanding of the constant transitions in life. I document transitions to comprehend. I often find myself capturing quiet intimate moments in both human relations and on my own. I do not necessarily feel the need to shout, but I do believe in photography as an important part of understanding the world around us.
Over time he acquired his own language, nourished by his own experience and the realization of several master classes with different photographers such as Antonio Heredia, Manu Brabo, Antoine d'Agata and Crisitna García Rodero.
Currently, he is dedicated to the realization of long-term photographic works related to social and human taboos.
"Porosity is probably the concept that best characterises Etienne Courtois’s approach to his photographic work. One of the threads in his creative process is his distinctly plastic treatment of the medium through integrated and often barely noticeable interventions that are both sculptural and pictorial by nature. These interventions are evident in how he prepares his support as well as in the compositions themselves.
The interventions often originate from the confrontation between various random objects gathered by Courtois during his walks and rambles through the city or in nature, leading to surprising encounters that have a contemporary surrealistic quality, which is further accentuated by the treatment or plastic and pictorial transformations he applies. Courtois adds a subsequent layer of ambiguity to the reading of this process by creating sculptural forms - often in plaster, but also in wood - that are integrated into the images or applied in relief on the prints.
Occasionally, the ambivalence of the treatment is emphasised by multiple exposure of the same photographic negative, which modifies the chromatic values as well as the shapes in the initial image, creating the effect of a shift or spectral motion.
The work of Etienne Courtois clearly surpasses the dichotomy between figurative and representational art. The ambiguity in interpreting and understanding these interventions leads to completely new and surprising formal encounters between everyday objects in a whimsical, alienating atmosphere. Courtois’s work is marked by a distinctly free, singular and often witty approach that evokes the pictorial work of Walter Swennen or the sculptures of Koenraad Dedobbeleer."
Text by Emmanuel Lambion
Tine Bek (born in 1988) is a Danish visual artist who works with video, photography and sculpture. She studied History before graduating from Fatamorgana – The Danish School of art Photography and Glasgow School of Art, where she holds a Master degree in Fine Art Photography.
Bek has exhibited in Denmark, UK, Norway, Lithuania, Germany and USA among others, and has participated in various international residencies including; Palazzo Monti, Numeroventi, Casa Balandra to name a few.
Bek is represented in Madrid by Dust and Soul and in New York by Picture Room. In 2022 her first book; The Vulgarity of Being Three-Dimensional was published with Disko Bay. The book has been awarded with the Hasselblad Foundation's Photo BookGrant 2021.
Bek lived in Glasgow from 2013-18 where she co founded the gallery 16 Nicholson street alongside a series of self published books highlighting the works of emerging artists internationally. Hereby shaping a conceptual hybrid, transgressing conversations about identity and universality, existentialism and particularism. Today Bek is based in Copenhagen.
Carlos Trancoso (b. 1989) is a Portuguese visual artist that works and lives in Porto. He uses the photographic gaze in a critical perspective on the way the human being relates to technology. His work aims to challenge established patterns of interaction and creation of images in contemporary society. Although he mainly uses fictional approaches, his work intermingles with a documental photography language, creating cameraless images, mixed media and computer generated images.Recently he has exhibited at festivals such as Photoalicante in Spain, Backlight in Finland and Bienal da Maia in Portugal.
Her work was exhibited internationally in personal and collective shows and since 2019 she teaches at the Master IUAV in Photography.
In 2018 she was awarded with the Giovane Fotografia Italiana Award at Fotografia Europea (Reggio Emilia) and Lesley A. Martin awarded her dummy ‘Are They Rocks or Clouds?’ with the Cortona On The Move Dummy Award. Thanks to these awards and the collaboration with Hans Gremmen and Taco Hidde Bakker in 2019 the photobook was published by Fw:Books. The photobook was awarded with the 2020 Bastianelli Award for the best italian photobook.
In 2019 she was commissioned by MUFOCO and the Italian Ministry of Culture of a project about italian architectural heritage and later, by the National Mountain Museum, of a new project based on their archives.
Caneve’s work is now part of private and public collections.
She is co-founder of CALAMITA/À, a multidisciplinary platform exploring the attractive nature of catastrophes in society and in the environment.