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open for application
online event
Jun 20
Jun 20, 2026
Plant-based Developers Workshop with Benedetta Casagrande

During the workshop participants will learn how to make plant-based developers powered by the photoreactive properties of plants and kitchen waste, and will be introduced to the material history of photography and the basics of ecological thinking. Students will test the developers made during the workshop developing photograms where they will assemble plants, their bodies and personal objects in the darkroom to construct images of the local territory in which artificial and natural bodies meet and coexist on the photographic surface.

Materials (provided by the darkroom):

- Possibility to boil two pots on a stove (e.g. a portable electric stove and two pots)
- Vitamin C powder
- Soda crystals
- Photographic paper (new and/or expired, both are fine)
- Vinegar
- Coarse salt
- Water
- Darkroom thermometer
- I am planning to teach students to make a saline solution instead of using industrial fix,
but prints should stay in the saline solution for 24-72 hours. If students cannot come
back to pick up the work at a later date, then we would need to use IlFord Rapid Fix.
- pH test strips
- Enough enlargers for all students (one every two students should be fine)

Students should bring pen and paper, and any objects they would be curious to assemble in a photogram.

Event Details:

Time: 10:00 am - 5:30 pm (with lunch break)

MK Ateliers, Mauritskade 24, 1091 GC Amsterdam

SIGN UP HERE (5 spots available on a first-come, first-served basis)

open for application
online event
Jun 24
Jun 24, 2026
Screening & Artist Talk with Lawrence Lek

Join us to a special evening at the FUTURES Hub in Amsterdam with artist and filmmaker Lawrence Lek.

Lawrence Lek is an artist, filmmaker and musician whose work explores artificial intelligence, simulation and speculative futures through films, immersive installations and virtual worlds. He has become one of the leading artistic voices examining the cultural, emotional and societal implications of AI.

The evening centres on a screening of Empty Rider (2024), Lawrence Lek's latest work, followed by a conversation and Q&A with the artist. It is a unique opportunity to engage with his research and practice in an intimate setting — and to join a wider conversation about artificial intelligence, storytelling, and the futures we are already living inside.

Programme

Date: 24 June 2026

17:00 - Arrival and welcome

17:30 - Screening of Empty Rider (2024)

- Artist talk with Lawrence Lek

- Audience Q&A

- Drinks and light refreshments

Location

FUTURES Hub

Isaac Titsinghkade 6, Amsterdam

Admission is free. Places are limited - registration is required.

RSVP by 23 June.

[RSVP HERE]

open for application
online event
Jun 30
Jun 30, 2026
FUTURES x Magnum Artist Spotlight: Sára Kölcsey

Join us for a Magnum x FUTURES Artist Spotlight with Sára Kölcsey.

Sára Kölcsey will present her latest work.

About FUTURES x Magnum Artist Spotlight:

Five times a year, Magnum Learn invites a FUTURES photographer to take the spotlight in an online conversation about their artistic journey. The series connects audiences worldwide with the artist’s practice, inspirations, and the ideas behind their work.

We also hope to inspire the next generation of photographers, providing them with the opportunity to connect with fellow artists.

Details:

Online

Tuesday, 30 June

17:00 - 18:00 Amsterdam time

Free – Registration required

open for application
online event
Jul 1
Jul 1, 2026
Open Studio With Benedetta Casagrande


Join us for Benedetta Casagrande's Open Studio, our newest resident at the FUTURES Photography Hub. Benedetta Casagrande will present her project “Recollections” as part of the FUTURES Residency.

Benedetta Casagrande is an artist, writer, and educator working with photography. Starting from a practice-based theoretical approach in the fields of ecology and critical studies, Casagrande develops a biocentric practice in which photography is used to investigate interspecies relationships and more-than-human life in times of extinction and environmental ruination.

"Recollections is an ongoing body of work which (re)collects narratives of lived encounters with other species whilst looking at photography's own entanglement in processes of environmental degradation, questioning the limits and possibilities of art practices as tools to face the multiple crises we currently inhabit"- Benedetta Casagrande

Event details

1 July 2026 | 17:30 – 20:30

Q&A 18.30

FUTURES Photography Hub, Isaac Titsinghkade 6, 1018 CA Amsterdam

RSVP HERE by 30 June

open for application
online event
Sep 22
Sep 22, 2026
FUTURES x Magnum Artist Spotlight: Visvaldas Morkevicius

Please join us for a Magnum x FUTURES Artist Spotlight with Visvaldas Morkevicius.

Visvaldas Morkevicius will present his latest photography project.

“Losing someone is like the sky surrendering a star, a note falling silent in a familiar tune. Everything changes, with memories lingering in the air like echoes in empty rooms. Moments resurface unexpectedly: fragments of laughter, the warmth of a touch, vivid and almost too real to be gone. Moving forward feels strange, like walking on uneven ground, each step shifting what once felt certain. You drift between shadows and light, caught between the past and the future. Something within you subtly rearranges, yet nothing feels completely whole.”

Using photography as a medium, the artist captures the emotional terrain of loss – fragmented memories, fleeting moments, and the interplay of absence and presence – creating visual echoes that explore the fragile balance between holding on and moving forward. Ultimately, the piece becomes a “letter to self of acceptance.”

Details

Online

Tuesday 22 September

17:00 - 18:00 Amsterdam time

Free – Registration required

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Past events
things we had a lot of fun at
open for application
online event
May 9
Apr 10, 2018
Coa, Giannico, Mortarotti, Perna, Pingitore, Positano

Until November 4th you still can have the chance to visit the exhibition "Coa, Giannico, Mortarotti, Perna, Pingitore, Positano" promoted and hosted by Futures Photography partner CAMERA - Italian Center for Photography in Turin.

The exhibition is the first exposition staged by CAMERA in the field of the European Photography Platform – FUTURES. On the other, the works presented by six emerging artists constitute the initial output of unseen research carried out for this occasion, and which will evolve further over the months to come. The exhibition thus is not conceived in thematic or linguistic sections oriented towards supporting a thesis, although it is designed to provide an overview of the contents and languages that describe contemporary production in the Italian field and, thanks to the future shows and projects, will contribute to making up a major mapping of the state of the art in the field of emerging photography. 

The artists invited to take part in the first edition are Umberto Coa (Palermo, 1988), Teresa Giannico (Bari, 1985), Vittorio Mortarotti (Savigliano, 1982), Armando Perna (Reggio Calabria, 1981), Lorenzo Pingitore (Turin, 1985) and Anna Positano (Genoa, 1981), proposed to CAMERA by a selection committee made up of Ilaria Bonacossa (Director of Artissima – Turin), Diane Dufour (director of Le Bal – Paris), Francesca Lavazza (collector), Beatrice Merz (Fondazione Merz – Turin) and Walter Guadagnini (director of CAMERA – Turin). 

Umberto Coa presents Ne bastavano quarantacinque (2018), a project developed in collaboration with the Ethno-anthropological Museum of Sutera in which – starting from a particular request for prisoners to work in agriculture put forward by the mayor of the time to the Ministry of War Affairs (1916), from archive images and objects – he generates a story which goes beyond the limits of the linear narrative. An installation made up of elements of a visual and objectual nature reconstructs a particular story set within the small Sicilian town at the start of the century, offering a particular interpretation, midway between reality and fiction.

In Stanza Con Sedia Da Arbitro E Ruota Di Marmo (2018), Teresa Giannico makes an instrumental use of the codes of documentary photography to construct new realities. Starting from a drawing of hers, she represents a domestic interior in which objects display an unnatural relationship between one another. She then goes on to produce paper dioramas to reconstruct these imaginary environments, covering the three-dimensional surfaces of the objects themselves also through a major use of images taken from the web. The models are produced in a fairly undescriptive manner, and once photographed are destroyed.

With the three images Untitled (2018) Vittorio Mortarotti explores the issue of inhabited memory and the ways of creating memory, i.e. the ‘known’ in the social and cultural sense of the everyday in a given community. In order to do this, he shows us examples of people during rites of possession that really take place on one of the islands of the archipelago of the Democratic Republic of São Tomé, showing them in a state of trance. Inhabiting a space generates codes and habits that become the culture of a community, while memory is inhabited by the repetition and the reinterpretation of facts in the continual construction of sense.

The intrinsic fragility of places is the theme focused on by Armando Perna in the series Un paesaggio instabile. Calabria 1783/2018. The first set of a wider-ranging research project, the story starts out from Istoria de fenomeni del Tremoto avvenuto nelle Calabrie (1783), moving through the research of the geographers and historians of Calabria, Zanotti Bianco and Isnardi in the first half of the 20th century right up to a modern-day mapping. The photographs dialogue in an unprecedented manner with boards illustrated by Vivenzio and archive imagery, with a view to documenting how instability and precariousness – be they generated by natural or manmade phenomena – play a decisive role in outlining the characteristic traits of the population and the territory.

In the two shots of the series Parmenide (2018), Lorenzo Pingitore reflects on being, photographing a large sphere, 4.5 metres in diameter placed in ever different settings and architectures, chosen for their capacity to exalt a change between past, present and future, be it imposed by nature or by man. The tame nature of Villa Pisani, and the wild surroundings of Lago Verde enter into dialogue with the sphere, highlighting the process of the change of the perception of both. The places and the sphere, despite being immobile, create a unique whole that will persist over time thanks to the capacity of photography to halt the time in an image.

Lungo Mare Canepa (2018) is the artist’s book produced by Anna Positano, a wander through imagery along the western outskirts of Genoa. Despite the evocative name, the place is presented as a major traffic artery from which the sea cannot even be seen. Walking first along the north side of the road and photographing towards the sea, and then walking back along the road on the Foranea Dam looking inland, Positano takes a shot every seventy steps in order to portray a complete section of the road.

open for application
online event
Feb 10
Feb 10, 2018
Award Ceremony ING Unseen Talent Award

Since 2013, ING Unseen Talent Award provides an international platform for emerging European photography talent to present their work on a global scale. Futures is delighted to announce that the five finalists of the ING Unseen Talent Award 2018 are Futures Talents Dávid Biró (1992, Hungary), Jaakko Kahilaniemi (1989, Finland), Pauline Niks (1982, Netherlands), Eva O’Leary (1989, Ireland) and Alexey Shlyk (1986, Belarus). The finalists will spend the following two months in an extensive coaching course, creating new work for the ING Collection related to this year’s theme: New Horizons: Exploring the promise and perils of the future. The resulting work of the selected artists will be on display during Unseen Amsterdam 2018 from the 21st to the 23rd of September. The winners will be announced at the ING Unseen Talent Award Ceremony on the 20th of September.

Voting for ING Unseen Talent Award is open until 18.00 on Wednesday the 19th of September. Vote now!

This year at Unseen Amsterdam, all ING debit cardholders receive a €5 discount on day tickets! Get yours now.

ING UNSEEN TALENT PROGRAMME 2018
The ING Unseen Talent Award is an initiative of ING and Unseen that gives new European photography talent a stage to present their work on a global scale. ING sees an important role for artists within society for their often provocative and insightful perspectives on societal changes. Stemming from ING’s mission to enhance a culture of innovation and change, the incentive photo award for new talent was initiated in collaboration with Unseen six years ago.

The ING Unseen Talent Programme encourages emerging artists to explore the boundaries of contemporary photography and helps them kick-start their career. It introduces the finalists to extensive networks, providing support from experts and opportunities to exchange ideas with photography professionals. This year, the programme will be led by the internationally established British installation artist, filmmaker and photographer, Isaac Julien. Under his supervision, the selected artists will create new work within the theme New Horizons: Exploring the promise and perils of the future.

ING Art Management and Unseen have selected the five finalists from a long-list provided by experts associated Futures.The scouts who compiled the list are associated with: British Journal of Photography (United Kingdom), CAMERA (Italy), Hyères Festival (France), FOMU (Belgium), Fotofestiwal Łódź (Poland), PHotoESPAÑA (Spain), PhotoIreland (Ireland), Photo Romania Festival (Romania), Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center (Hungary) and Triennial of Photography Hamburg (Germany).

ING UNSEEN TALENT AWARD JURY MEMBERS
The winner of the ING Unseen Talent Award 2018 will be chosen by an international jury, including Emma Bowkett (Director of Photography, FT Weekend Magazine), Florian Ebner (Chief of Photography, Centre Pompidou), Fiona Tan (internationally renowned visual artist and filmmaker) and Sanne ten Brink (Head Curator, ING Collection) and will receive a €10,000 project production fund. In addition to the Jury Prize, a Public Prize will also be awarded to the finalist with the most online votes. The winner of the Public Prize will receive a commission to create new work for the ING Collection. Both winners will be announced at the ING Unseen Talent Award Ceremony during the official opening night of Unseen Amsterdam on the 20th of September 2018.
                                     
unseenamsterdam.com

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