The artists nominated by

Federico Berardi, a graduate of ECAL (University of Art & Design of Lausanne), is a Swiss-born artist and still life photographer living between Paris and Switzerland. His work explores photography’s potential for creating illusion, while interrogating the technical boundaries of commercial and fine art photography.

Hubert Crabieres (b. 1989) lives and works in Argenteuil, France.

My photographic work is structured around a single series: Gravity and Grace. The staging is the main focus of my research. It coordinates my relationship with the subject and my desire for images. I photograph my relatives and the objects I surround myself with. I seek to provoke the tensions that coexist or confront each other in the domestic space and that of the staging. 

Kerry was born and raised in Staffordshire. She moved to London, where she still lives, to study at London College of Printing, which is now part of University of the Arts London.

She directed her first short film, documenting the 'Fair' cashmere project which supports livelihoods of nomadic herding communities in the remote Gobi desert. Kerry has participated in solo and group exhibitions internationally, and has been selected as part of the 34th edition of the International Festival of Fashion, Photography, and FashionAccessories in Hyères. 

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.

Vincent Levrat, grew up in a small town in the countryside of Switzerland. After succeeded with honours the photography school of Vevey, he decided to pursue his path to the ECAL in Lausanne where he just obtained his Bachelor Degree with the Prix Elinchrom. His work has been shown in different collective exhibitions and publications.

Exploring the boundaries between sculpture and photography, Vincent likes to gets his hands dirty. Among all the wood cut and the nail hammered, what he likes the most is to make you scratch your head. Let’s face it; we all get bored on the internet. Remember those magic hours spent playing with a woodstick when you were just a kids? Vincent is calling that up.

Jean-Vincent Simonet (b. 1991) graduated from ECAL in 2014. He is based in Paris and Zurich where he juggles between commissioned photography and personal explorations. He was part of FOAM Talent, Plat(t)form at Fotomuseum Winthertur and had a solo show at FOAM 3h in 2015. He won a Swiss Design Awards in 2015, 2017 and 2018. He recently published a book In Bloom with SPBH Editions and had a solo at Webber Gallery (London).

Characterized by a penchant for sheer entropy and excess, my practice pushes the poetics of chaos to the very limits of the photographic medium. From landscapes and bodies, to human connection, to infrastructure and interior worlds, anything can be sucked into my process and churned back out, transmogrified and transformed through chemical manipulations and surreal photo-collages.

Part travel diary and part love letter to the cities of Tokyo and Osaka, In Bloom is a searing, hyper-visual journey into the heart of Japanese underground culture and an ode to the overwhelming experience of seeing a place with the eyes of a stranger for the first time. The project reads as a frenetic dream sequence, as if the countless nights he spent in the belly of the city have folded into a single never-ending one.

Printing my images onto plastic paper so the ink never quite dries, I then uses water and chemicals to transform the surface of the prints, abstracting and blurring them as if the scenes are melting away.

Andrew Nuding was born in Dublin, Ireland. Nuding graduated from The NCAD Fine Art Media (Ireland), in 2015. He lives in London.

Exhibitions include: 'Making Strange' 2019 Grand Prix Eyes on Talent in Photography & Sustainability, opened on 6th November during Paris Photo (2019) / 'Making Strange' Hyeres International Festival of Fashion and Photography (2019) / 'Labs New Artist III' Red Hook Labs (2019) / ‘There’s Life in it Yet’ (2016), with Kieran Kilgallon / ‘The Fighting Irish’ (2016) at Drop Everything Festival on Inís Oirr Island, Galway / ‘Resonate’ (2015) at Gallery of Photography, Dublin / 'Apparitions' (2015) at NCAD, Dublin / ‘Thread’ (2012) at the Gallery of Photography, Dublin.

Johanna Benaïnous was born in 1991 in Paris and Elsa Parra was born in 1990 in Bayonne. They currently live and work in Paris. In 2014, while Johanna studies at Les Beaux-arts de Paris in Eric Poitevin's studio and Elsa studies at Les Arts Décoratifs de Paris, they met in New-York during a common exchange program at the School of Visual Art. Afterwards they got their Master degree with first class honours in 2015.

Since they first met in United States, Elsa and Johanna have been working together as a duo of artists photographers and directors. They were invited at 61th Salon de Montrouge in 2016, finalists for the prize 'HSBC pour la photographie 2016', nominated the same year for 'Révélations Emerige 2016' and invited at Festival Circulation(s) 2017 and Festival Photo Saint-Germain 2017. They won the 2nd prize of 'Prix Picto de la mode 2017'. In 2018, their piece A Couple of Them enters the collection of the FMAC. Elsa & Johanna recently won the Public Prize at the 2019 Hyères Festival in the photo section.