The artists nominated by

With a background in engineering David Denil’s photographical interest started in 2014 by seeing Jacob Riis’s ‘How the Other Half Lives’. Fascinated by the excessive presence of light, the striking compositions and shadows encapsulating daily life in combination with the strategically use of the medium challenged David to explore contemporary subject matter. Within his first project Let Us Not Fall Asleep While Walking, David Denil started to translate the psychological dimensions of Ukraine as a collision between past, present and future.

Mentored by the Magnum photographer Carl De Keyzer, he chose not to show the war in the east, but to focus on the aspects of life presented to him in the capital Kiev. By his active presence his work functions as an extension on the early 20th century documentary approach and tends to reveal universal questions rather then to depict actual proof of fact.

While working on two new projects, David is finishing the dummy book of Let Us Not Fall Asleep with the input of British Ukrainian researcher and cultural manager Myroslava Hartmond. Within the book the images will be interconnected with referential sources, testimonies and reflections on the impact that both media and politics have on the hybrid war that is putting strains on the Ukrainian dream and experience of freedom. This book will be published at the end of 2018, exactly 5 years after the start of the hybrid war.

London based photographer Phillip Prokopiou was born to Greek immigrants in South Africa. Originally from a fashion and costume design background, the self-taught photographer established a practice under the name Studio Prokopiou in 2014 which he co-founded with his partner in life and art Panos Poimenidis.

The images mainly feature personalities from the world’s nightlife, fashion and art communities. The work is an exploration of queer identity, self-invention and LGTBQI culture informed by a love of high-camp, kitsch aesthetics and art history. They aim to capture both the surface and the interior world of the subject halfway between truth and fantasy. Much as Susan Sontag elucidates in ‘Notes on Camp’, Studio Prokopiou is the lie that tells the truth.

Phoebe Kiely (b. 1991 in Leicester, England) earned a BA from Manchester School of Art (2015). She completed a residency at Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool (2016). During the residency she exhibited three different edits from her series They were my landscape. Two portraits from They were my landscape were selected to be in Portrait of Britain exhibition (2016).

During Photo London in 2018, They were my landscape (MACK) was launched.

Kiely was nominated for the Paul Huf Award, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award and selected to be in the British Journal of Photography Ones to Watch, Talent issue (2018).

Nominated for Futures by the British Journal of Photography, Rie Yamada (b. 1984) was born in Nagoya, Japan. She lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

In her most recent work, Rie Yamada stages self-portraits through other people, finding her source matter in family photo albums acquired from Japan, her homeland, and Germany, where she now lives, recreating scenes in her own likeness. Highlighting gender stereotypes and social archetypes, her often humorous work questions not just the family, but the changing role of photography itself in expressing how we want to be perceived. The images are, in a sense, a search for her own image, in the same way a family photo is intended to define and project their identity.

Valeria Cherchi (b.1986) is an Italian photographer. She was born and raised in Sardinia, Italy.

Her practice focuses on projects regarding social and cultural issues. Her research is driven by the need of exploring topics such as time, memories and history connected to her personal experience. She is interested in true and tangible character-driven stories, often told by combining photography and text.

In 2018, Valeria was one the named in ‘British Journal of Photography’s Ones to Watch.