Joana Dionisio (b. 1993) is a Portuguese photographer based in Porto, where she works as a freelancer on various commissioned and personal projects. Having first studied Audiovisual Communication Technologies, she completed an MA in Artistic Photography in 2021. Dionisio has exhibited her work in a range of solo and group exhibitions, whilst she was recently selected for FRESH EYES – a publication showcasing emerging European Photography Talent by GUP Magazine.
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.
After finishing her undergraduate studies in 2018, Sophie Gladstone has continued her art practise while working in editorial positions. Her work has been exhibited in both Europe and Asia and was recently shortlisted for the Emergentes International Photography Award and nominated for the Foam Paul Huf Award. Currently, Gladstone works as Assistant Photography Editor at Wallpaper*, a luxury design-focused publication. This role feeds back into her photography, informing a critical perspective as she works across the reality and fantasy of contemporary visual culture. Aesthetics of advertising, social media and e-commerce are also inspiration points. Through her practice, she performs the capitalist pressures that undermine positive traits within us, such as the desire to improve ourselves and connect with others.
What does reality look like when it is photographed from its own perimeter, in the uncanny zone between certainty, objectivity and dreams, where an idealised version of the world has infiltrated? Sébastien Cuvelier’s photography may well provide the answer.
In his images, what is real always seems larger than it actually is. The photographs appear to have passed through a fantasy filter, to be projected from a dimension where other rules apply. The sensation is similar to the one felt in the twilight zone between wakefulness and sleep, when ambiguous landscapes are crossed in what is not quite a dream.
It is not unusual to feel a little uncomfortable when looking at his photographs. To have the sense that one is intruding on someone else’s secret, imaginary territory. Perhaps it’s because the people, places and objects are made unfamiliar by certain details, yet seem a part of daily life. A superficial mundanity, one filled with residential blocks, interiors decorated with ostentatious luxury, ordinary streets and gardens. And yet, our usual references are rendered obsolete.
The colours, the blurring, the inconsistencies: everything conspires to make us doubt that these photographs portray what really exists. Sébastien Cuvelier appears to have found the way to an observation room that provides a mysterious and disturbing view of the human desire to become a utopian incarnation of itself.
- Text by Philippe Marczewski (.TIFF)
Dea Botica (b. 1995) holds a BA in Cinematography and an MA in Photography, which she completed at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb. Her artistic work uses photography as a medium to explore topics of everyday life, identity, family heritage and tradition. Thus far, Botica’s work has been exhibited at several group and solo shows in Croatia and beyond. She has participated in several residency programmes – most recently in 2021, as part of the European Union art-research project, Island Connect.
Bundurakis’ work focuses on how it feels to be a living organism in this era that lies between the primal, the modern & the post natural-world. Images collide and divide according to the situation. Drawings, video and haikus are incorporated. Extracting fragments of the bodies that surround her and her own, she layers the pure with the artificial and the thirst for something truly crisp with loss and boredom, aiming to create cosmic and organic sensations.
In her project Eating Magma, Elena focuses on 4 ‘F’s: her Flesh, her Food, Fauna, and Flora. Creating an interconnecting universe, by combining these 4 ‘F’s, whose roles and existence, constantly shift and mutate into each other, she attempts to find an emotional and ethical position within a society ruled by control systems.
www.freethecelery.com
Giaime Meloni is a visual researcher with a PhD in Architecture, currently living between two islands: Île-de-France and Sardinia. The aim of his work is to explore the role of the photography as a sensible instrument to narrate the space complexity. His researches has been published in various publications (MAM Saint Etienne, INTRU). In 2017, he was shortlisted for Premio Graziadei with his long-term project Das Unheimiliche. He teaches photography as an instrument of the making of the architectural design between France and Italy.
My practice is conceived as an act capable of questioning the nature of places.
The images provide a tangible proof of my presence in the territory, in a certain way they documented it. However I would like to take distance compared to the documentation – and strictly documentary photography – in order to provide a more universal reflection on our relationship with the space.
The photographic action that I develop aims to questioning the restitution of ordinary space in search of a visual and spatial connection with the subject. The specific interest of this practice is to investigate, by theory and practice, the photographic instantaneity and the message that it carries.
The paradox of images is that they pretends to reproduce things which are only themselves. But this is only an illusion, a conviction that is a part of the magic contemplation. In fact, during the act of photographing, I realize that things denying their existence by the image.
What it remains frozen into the fragments is the (artificial) reflection of reality as an intention of my gaze.
Every photos prove that there is an implicit message exceeding the limits of the image itself. I accept that the message of the images can be corrupted / destroyed at any time by the viewer / reader.
www.giaimemeloni.com
Marc-Antoine Garnier (b. 1989) is a French photographer and visual artist, who graduated from the Ecole Supérieure d’art et Design Le Havre-Rouen. In recent years, he has presented his works in numerous exhibitions. His pieces have been collected by the FRAC Normandie-Rouen, as well as several art libraries in France. Garnier’s research finds particular appreciation in Japan, where he exhibited at the Nishieda Foundation as part of the Nuit Blanche de Kyoto in 2017, and at the Tezukayama Gallery in 2016.
website: marcantoinegarnier.com
Instagram: @marc_antoine.garnier
The work of Thomas Nolf examines the ways in which national myths are formed, instrumentalised and frequently suppressed. Confounding fiction and documentary, fabled event and scientific enigma, his work looks into how nation-building ideology influences modes of storytelling, and vice versa. Nolf handles his subjects with a close appreciation of narrative and its ambiguous relationship with veracity and considers the ways in which heritage and eroded beliefs can be re-established and repurposed.
For his long-term project Peculiar Artefacts in Bosnia and Herzegovina - an imaginary exhibition, for example, Nolf’s point of departure was the so-called “Bosnian pyramids” and other disputed historical sites and artefacts, including stone spheres and medieval monuments. Juxtaposing his own documentary work with kitschy acrylic paintings of dream-like, bucolic landscapes and an assortment of found photographic footage —including shots of a triangular mountain looming over a scenic village and a shepherd carrying a sheep on his back — Nolf keeps adding elements to our already confused reading of the phenomenon, its emergence and reception. By doing so, he revives the public controversy over the existence of an ancient civilisation in the region.
Drawing on the mythological dimension of the triangle-shaped hills, Nolf proposed an exhibition that would exploit the stories and objects surrounding the “Bosnian pyramids” to the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which, in 2012, had temporarily closed its doors due to a lack of state funds. If myths and legends have proven to be valuable assets in branding a particular place as a unique tourist experience, its effectiveness in generating local informal economies might as well be explored.
Even if Nolf’s project-based practice is driven by a pragmatic desire to formulate alternatives to the status quo, he poetically engages with particular sites and times, carefully tending to a range of subjects — from the promise of a desirable ancient past to the current funding realities devastating cultural institutions in post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina — while, at the same time commenting on photography's rhetorical qualities and its — at times deceptive — relationship to representation and truth-telling.
Text by Laura Herman
He has been dealing with photography in his artistic practice since 2013, attending courses organized by the Municipality of Maroussi, under the general supervision and responsibility of the photographer Dionysis Koutsis. He is a member of the Hellenic Photographic Society
Amelie Schüle has been the Director of Photoforum Pasquart in Biel/Bienne since 2023. In this role, she oversees a dynamic program dedicated to supporting emerging and mid-career photographers while promoting contemporary photography. Her work focuses on the intersection of artistic production, culture, and society, with an emphasis on empowering people to actively engage with social structures, politics, and their surroundings.Before joining Photoforum Pasquart, Amelie worked at Foam Photography Museum and Unseen in Amsterdam, where she curated exhibitions, developed public programming, and supported emerging talents. She also has experience in the gallery sector in Switzerland.Amelie holds a master’s degree in Curatorial Studies from the Zurich University of the Arts. Beyond her institutional roles, she is actively involved in the photography community, participating in portfolio reviews, mentoring artists, and guest lecturing.
Yana Kononova (b. 1977) has an academic background in social sciences, and holds a PhD in sociology. She was born on Pirallahi island in the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan – now an important site of oil extraction. During the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, her family emigrated to Ukraine. Having later relocated to the countryside of the Trachtemiriv peninsula, Kononova turned to photography. She graduated from the Photoschool of Viktor Marushchenko before following a photography course organised by the Image Threads Collective (USA). In 2019, Kononova won the Bird in Flight Prize in emerging Photography, and in 2022 was the recipient of the Hariban Award, presented by Benrido. Her works have been exhibited in Ukraine and abroad.
Mateusz Kowalik is a documentary photographer based in Warsaw, Poland. In his work he explores the issues of contemporary society. He studies at the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava, Czech Republic. He is a graduate of the Sputnik Photos Mentoring Program and the PARALLEL European Photo Based Platform. He showed his works, among others at festivals in Wrocław, Łódź, Kraków, Hanover, Zagreb and Los Angeles, as well as at the Robert Capa Photography Center in Budapest.
www.mateusz-kowalik.com
Corso began working as a documentary photographer in 2011, publishing in media outlets like National Geographic, Al Jazeera, TIME Lightbox, GEO magazine, MO, Il Reportage, VICE, El País, and or Revista 5W. Among the cultural centers that have hosted and exhibited his projects, the following stand out: The Cervantes Institute in New York, the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts, Palau Robert (Barcelona), Círculo de Bellas Artes (Madrid), the International PHOTON Festival (Valencia), Photo Romania Festival and the LUMIX Festival (Hannover). His work is part of the traveling exhibition "Creadores de Conciencia", curated by Juan Manuel Castro Prieto and Chema Conesa, which compiles the work of 40 authors under the topic "committed photographers".
His documentary work has been recognized by the International PHOTON Festival, BANFF Photo Essay Competition, Prix de la Photographie Paris, Moscow International Foto Awards, International Photography Awards and as a finalist of other contests such DAYS JAPAN Photo Awards, the World Reporter Award, the Contemporary African Photography Prize, the Siena International Photography Awards, the Balkan Photo Awards and the LUMIX festival, among others.
In 2018 he is nominated for the World Press Photo 6x6 Global Talent Program and his project MATAGI received the National Geographic Society Explorer Grant.
www.javiercorso.com
Marcin Kruk (b. 1982) lives and works in Rzeszow, Poland. With a background in Archival and Historical Studies, he currently studies Photography at the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava, Czech Republic. A Fujifilm Poland ambassador, Kruk is also a member of the Archive of Public Protest (A-P-P). His practice revolves around a series of long-term documentary projects.
Benedek Bognár (1986) lives and works in Budapest. He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in photography from the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design. In 2012 he studied performance and video art at the Estonian Academy of Art in Tallinn on an Erasmus scholarship. His series of works address issues related to current social phenomena, aiming to create unusual or new perspectives. He is primarily concerned with the symptoms of virtuality, digitalization, and the age of image-based communication. In his work, he often reflects on photography itself as a medium capable of creating the illusion of an objective representation of the world and its role in the process of human cognition. In his recent work, he has been concerned with modern myths and the general human need for irrational stories to explain the world. In his thesis, Genesis, he examined how the entertainment and advertising industries use the patterns, archetypes, and topoi from which humanity’s ancient great myths were built, from the perspective of the functioning of consumer society. In his work CUI PRODEST, which he is working on under the József Pécsi Photography Scholarship, he deals with the pseudo-news and disinformation of the world, which are based on irrational contexts and enemy images instead of scientific paradigms.
The perfect skin and the smooth image which accompanies it, Eva O’Leary knows all too well the different ingredients and recipes of commercial photography. She too, as a teen, ate this cake which now, as an artist, she presents to us on a plateau. In a refrigerator rests a sponge cake, accompanied with printed icing: a saccharine young woman with perfect blow-dried hair watches us. Since it is said that revenge is a dish best served cold, this is the fate which the photographer reserves for the young blonde haired woman with the Colgate smile and her diktat. She grew up in the United States of America in a campus town whose name is almost an order – Happy Valley – and remembers her years spent masking her Irish head in the hood of a must have Abercrombie sweatshirt. The series, Happy Valley, is rooted in her town and her adolescent memories, describing an environment which is intrusive and worrying, modelling individuals whose self identity has been traded for a generic body. With the more recent Spitting Image, it is the years before, the adolescent vulnerability which are exposed. Young girls, around fifteen years old, present themselves to us, tightly framed on a vibrant blue backdrop which permits neither an escape for the gaze, nor breathing room for the model. Eva O’Leary accompanies these photographs with videos: perched upon a stool, we watch them searching for the person they hoped to find in the mirror. In this interval the photographer reopens the field of representations and with it, the freedom to be complex, different, uncertain, unique, human.
Ebbesen works with reflections to create surreal effects in her work: "In my work, I aim to play with the sense of reality that we relate to the photograph by distorting the objects and space within the picture frame. With these effects, I aim to surprise and confuse and leave one with the question of what is real." Conceptually her works often deal with identity and the subconscious self affected by and interrelated with the surrounding world.
Anaïs Boileau was born in 1992 in Nîmes. She is a photographic artist who works exploring Mediterranean cultures as a constant source of inspiration in her projects. She graduated from the art school of Lausanne, ECAL. She lives in the south of France where she alternates between photographic commissions and her artistic projects.Her work is presented in various group exhibitions and selected in several international festivals. In September 2017, she joins a year of master at Central Saint Martins school in London in photography. Since her first collaboration for M le magazine du Monde in 2015, she has worked regularly for the French and international press. Her work can be found in magazines and newspapers such as Le Monde, M le magazine du Monde, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Time or Vanity Fair.
Paolo Ciregia (b. 1987) is an Italian artist. After experience as a reporter at the forefront of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, in the last five years his artistic research has been focused on Ukraine context, manipulating and reworking his personal archive in a new way. Investigating and deconstructing both archives symbols and language, Ciregia aims to reveal the atrocities behind the war, destroying the propaganda patina through installations and sculptures. His work has been exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions. Among the major prizes are Winner of Talent FOAM Amsterdam 2016, Winner of “LOOP, Giovane Fotografia Italiana”, Festival Fotografia Europea 2017, “Honorable jury Mention” at Premio Francesco Fabbri 2016, TU35 at the Museo Pecci in Prato 2017, Winner of Leica Talent 2012.
http://www.paolociregia.eu/