The artists nominated by
Every year, a network of 18 leading photography institutions each select five emerging talents to take part in FUTURES. This European photography platform brings together the global photography community to support and nurture the professional development of emerging artists worldwide. For 2025, FOTODOK is proud to nominate: Angeniet Berkers, Benjamin Li, Julius Thissen, Parisa Aminolahi and Tashiya de Mel. They will each join the FUTURES community and network, which provides them with opportunities to showcase their work and participate in professional events.
Employing a variety of different styles, the selected artists share multi-layered creative practices and innovative approaches to the medium of photography. Whether excavating forgotten histories, studying the impact of diasporic family relations or navigating trans and queer visibility in a polarised political climate, their works approach a range of pressing social questions, many of which are rooted in contemporary Dutch society; questions to which FOTODOK is committed.
Bones of Graphene, Skin of Kevlar is the second chapter in Julius Thissen’s visual research project, Watch it Collapse. Its primary focus is to visualise the impact of global far-right politics and sentiments, contrasted with the fighting spirit of trans individuals across generations. Vulnerable images are combined with symbols of masculinity and postures of resistance. Graphene, Skin of Kevlar expresses a need for resilience without losing the ability to be soft and true.
Tashiya de Mel’s Bittersweet History reflects on Dutch-Sri Lankan colonial history and its absence from mainstream discussions of the Dutch empire. The VOC’s cinnamon trade violently transformed the landscape and culture of Sri Lanka, leaving traces that remain visible today. De Mel’s archival collages criticise this history, whilst images of the artists’ mother preparing sago pudding infused with cinnamon convey a more personal connection to this contested spice. De Mel uses a variety of media to subvert and reclaim colonial narratives, suggesting alternative ways of looking at a shared history.
In 1935, Nazi Germany initiated a so-called “fertility programme” to provide the Third Reich with a new generation of leaders and SS officers. Angeniet Berker’s Lebensborn reveals both its broad scale and its human consequences: children born under this programme often lived a life of shame. The project serves as a timely warning of what our societies are capable of.
Parisa Aminolahi's deeply personal work presents a generation of middle class Iranian parents – living alone, often continents apart from their children. Tehran Diary follows the artist’s mother’s life in Tehran, as well as while visiting her three children overseas. Applying black and white paint over her photographs, Aminolahi’s images connect love, family rituals and the concept of home, pondering what it means to lose these.
Benjamin Li’s In Search of Perfect Orange is an archive that spans menus, pieces of tableware and written memories of his encounters while visiting over 1200 Chinese-Indonesian restaurants. His self-published Chin. Ind. Rest. Stickeralbum is a direct outcome of 10 years of travel between these restaurants. Benjamin’s resourceful, meticulous work results in a project that both confronts and honours a distinct cultural phenomena in the Netherlands.
Her dummy ECHO was shortlisted for the Book Dummy Award of Photo London & La Fabrica, Luma Rencontres D'Arles and the Cortona on the move Photobook prize. In 2019 she received the Mondriaan Fund Emerging Talent and FOTODOK stipend. In 2021 she was supported by the Mondriaan Fund and the Anna Cornelis Fund. Her book Lebensborn was shortlisted for the Aperture Paris Photo First Book Award and the Historical Book Award at Luma Rencontres d'Arles and won the Emergentes Portfolio Reviews in Braga in 2024.
Parisa Aminolahi (Tehran, Iran), based in the Netherlands, is a freelance filmmaker and photographer. Her series are mostly long-term projects. And her work explores themes such as displacement, exile, homeland, family, and childhood memories, using old family photographs, self-portraits, and her own family members as subjects. Her mediums include photography, documentary filmmaking, animation, painting, and mixed media.
She studied theatre stage design (BA) and animation (MA) at University of Art in Tehran and documentary filmmaking (MA) at Royal Holloway, University of London.
She is a recipient of The Firecracker Photographic Grant, The Netherlands Film Fund, GUP New Dutch Photography Talent of the Year and One World Media Student Film Bursary. Her dummy book, Tehran Diary, was shortlisted for the MACK First Book Award, BUP Book Award, and PHmuseum Women Photographers Grant. She has held screenings and exhibitions locally and internationally and is represented by Ag Galerie.
Since 2014, Benjamin has visited over 1.200 Chinese-Indonesian restaurants across the Netherlands in an endeavour to build an archive of this restaurant. During these visits he has collected menus, pieces of tableware and written memories of his encounters. Importantly, he has also taken photographs of over 250 unique Chinese-Indonesian dishes at these restaurants. Throughout the years Benjamin also traced back and collected many sugar packs, postcards, beer glasses and other objects all linked to (defunct) Chinese-Indonesian restaurants.
Benjamin finds beauty in the Chinese-Indonesian restaurant, but for him it is also a way to come to understand his Chinese roots and family history. Many of his family members, including his parents, have worked in the restaurants as way to survive and integrate into Dutch society. With his work Benjamin tries to honour the restaurant, where others at times mock it. Today he sees the significance of his work in straddling the tension between bringing out the absurdity of certain stereotypes and fostering a reappraisal of the beauty and heritage of the Chinese-Indonesian restaurant.
Tashiya de Mel is a photographer, environmental advocate, and communications specialist from Colombo, Sri Lanka who uses visual storytelling to create narratives that drive social change.
Her practice explores the nature and possibilities of documentary image-making and deals with themes such as colonial histories, representation, heritage, family, landscapes, and the climate crisis.
Tashiya is driven by a curiosity to forge connections with diverse disciplines such as art, history, academia and the environment. And find ways of bridging these disciplines through different forms of image-based media.
She was the recipient of the Visura grants for freelance visual journalists in 2023 for her project ‘Great Sandy River’ and received the Stroom talent award in 2024. Tashiya is a recent graduate of the ‘Photography and Society’ masters programme at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague (NL). She is based between Colombo and the Hague.
