She works in particular on the question of exoticism and on the family, using in her aesthetics the form of photographic documentary-fiction.
This year, she is one of the photographers selected for the 35th edition of the Hyères Fashion, Photography and Fashion Accessories Festival at Villa Noailles.
The polish photographer Natalia Kepesz (*1983) lives and works in Berlin. After studying cultural studies and art history at the Humboldt University in Berlin, she graduated in 2021 with a degree in photography at the Ostkreuzschule Berlin. Since 2016 she has been working as a freelance photographer. She is a member of bbk Berlin, VG Bild and Women Photograph.
Natalia Kepesz got third place in the World Press Photo Contest 2021 (Portrait Series). She also won the residency prize in the Portraits Hellerau Photography Award 2021, Les Jour Prix at Les Boutographies - recontres photographiques de Montpellier 2021 and was named GUP Fresheyes Talent 2021, among others.
Her works have been exhibited at the Belfast Photo Festival, Helsinki Photo Festival, Festspielhaus Hellerau Dresden, Münzenberg Forum Berlin, Noorderlicht Photo Festival and the World Press Exhibition Foto Tour, among others.
Since 2008 she is based in Spain where she works as a freelance photojournalist, combining her personal projects with the teaching of photography. She has published in BuzzFeed News, El Pais, XL Semanal, L'Obs, Equal Times, 5W magazine, Interviú, El Periódico de Cataluña, 7k magazine, Gazeta Wyborcza and Polityka among others.
Her projects address discrimination and societal dysfunctions in western society. She also works on youth radicalization and the raise of right-wing movements in Europe. Lately she has started to investigate the construction of national identity in post-Soviet regions in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
She has won different awards, such as the Third Prize in POY Latam 2015 (Mexico); she has been awarded with the Grant Programa Crisálidas Signo Editores Grant 2019 (Spain), with a Helge Humelvoll Scholarship (USA 2017) and with the “Photojournalism Grant 2015” (GrisArt International School of Photography, Barcelona), among others.
Finalist of the Grand Press Photo 2019 and 2012 in Poland and of the 19th FotoPres la Ciaxa (2013); she was also nominated in 2018 and 2017 Edition of Photography Magazine Grant (London). She has participated in festivals such as PhotOn 2019 and 2018 (Spain), Imaginaria 2019 (Spain), UCL Festival of Culture in London (2017), FOTONOVIEMBRE Tenerife (2015) and the VIII Biennal de Xavier Miserachs (2014) among others.
Renée Lorie lives and works in Brussel. She graduated in art history, filmstudies and photography.
Renée captures the light, she show her experience of the world around her. It’s a world full of contrasts. Her images show disharmony, memories in nowadays. Vulnerability, white against deep black backgrounds, day and night, emptiness and fullness. Coolness and heat, burning ice. The present and the absent. She’s looking for attachment, but displacement too. Themes are the mystery, the uncanny, abjection and the enigmatic. Creaking discomfort in down, a sensory touch in a flat image. She shows a glimpse, an error, disturbance, the lyrical. She’s showing distance, yet close framing. She uses the dark room, groping for light. Light traversing trees and water, that lives on the tide during spring tide. Everything is strange, yet daily and known. Trees, water, horse and dew, rustle, a man in a suit, sand mountains and a statue. She’s look around, capturing an image and imagining immediately another image, a walking écriture automatique, a photo novel, a same story. She likes to see the past in the present.
His practice explores themes of isolation and identity, the juxtaposition of collective and individual, communication versus segregation. By using small narratives he wants to shed light on ways we affect and are affected by artificial social and physical environments.
He has exhibited in The Netherlands and abroad and his work was included in The New Dutch Talent catalogue of 2017 from GUP magazine, and in the Encontros da Imagem 2017 festival program, while his project Point of View was shortlisted for FotoFilmic18.
More: http://www.vassilistriantis.com
Dafni Melidou (b. 1990, Greece) is a visual artist whose multidisciplinary practice combines research, photography, writing and multi-media experimentation. Coming from a scientific background her working and research methods are versatile, and she approaches her projects from many angles. She works with her own photographs, found images, tactile materials and smells, often re-appropriated and constructed into new constellations, shapes or forms.
Melidou's experimental works start with her daily encounters of events in the mass media and her personal observations. Her themes center around gender and social injustices, the complexities of representation and our conflicting perception of reality. A common thread in her work is the understanding of materiality and the physical world in a digital age. Her fascination lies with creating non-conclusive and often confusing stories that call for an open interpretation and invite the viewers to re-think dominantmedia narratives.
Melidou holds a B.A. in Chemistry, a M.Sc. in Food Science and she is currently pursuing her Master's degree in Photography & Society at The Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK). In 2021 she co-founded cartographydigest.com, an experimental visual platform aiming to stretch the boundaries of photography and map new territories. She is currently based between Rotterdam and Athens.
Guerra’s work has been exhibited individually in institutions and art centres such as The Domus Artium 2002 (DA2) in Salamanca, Centro Niemeyer in Asturias, Sala Amárica in Vitoria-Gasteiz, the PHotoEspaña festival in Madrid, Centro Leonés de Arte (CLA) in León, and several art galleries. He has also exhibited in the Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean (BJCEM) in Ancona, Italy and Thessaloniki, Greece; Talent Latent in Tarragona; Encontros da Imagem in Braga, Portugal; BredaPhoto International Photo Festival, Holland; the Embassy of Spain in Havana, Cuba; and Instituto Cervantes in Madrid. For his work, he has received a MUSAC Artistic Creation Grant, a Pilar Juncosa & Sotheby’s Award from the Miró Mallorca Foundation, a Villalar Foundation grant, a Community of Madrid Visual Art Grant, a VEGAP Grant for Visual Creation, and the Roberto Villagraz grant from EFTI. He has been artist in residence at the Casa de Velázquez Académie de France in Madrid and his work is included in public and private collections.
I like to approach different styles of photography, but I prefer the most URBEX (Urban Exploration) photography. I think this genre represents me the best, that's why I'm even more concerned with my project called PLACES SUFFERING.
I'm fascinated by the idea of going into abandoned buildings, finding out their stories, what happened there, why they were abandoned. When I enter such places it is as if I go back in time, I try to imagine those times, to feel the lives of the people who have passed there. Every time I go to a new location, I encompass the emotions for what I can find or what I can meet. We have found all sorts of things undamaged for years, left to chance, from documents, photographs, paintings, dishes, money, clothes, toys, to dead, mummified animals.
A common thread throughout his practice is an interest in the metaphorical potential of photographs. His project, ‘John’s Notebooks’ (2020-2021), pulls on the symbolism present with the landscape of the home to touch on the emotions and memories connected to the childhood loss of his father. Whereas his most recent work ‘Murmurations’ (2020-21), employs the starling murmuration as a symbol to reflect on the current global crisis and the act of coming together and converging as a group.
Barraclough is a recent graduate of the MA Photography programme at Bristol UWE and is due to exhibit his master’s project, ‘John’s Notebooks’, at the 2021 Bristol Photo Festival.
Giulia Mangione (b.1987) is an Oslo-based visual artist who works with photography, film and writing. She earned a first MA in Comparative Literary Studies from Goldsmiths University of London, and a second MFA in Fine Arts from the Art Academy in Bergen. She also studied Advanced Visual Storytelling at the Danish School of Media and Journalism in Denmark. Her first book Halfway Mountain, published by Journal in 2018, was selected for the Prix du Livre at Les Rencontres d'Arles and nominated for the MACK First Book Award. Mangione’s work has been exhibited at the International Center of Photography, New York; Musée de l’Élysée, Lausanne; Fotoforum, Bolzano; Fotogalleriet, Oslo; and Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen. She is currently part of the 6th round of the Norwegian Journal of Photography.
Instagram: @giulia_mangione
Website: www.giuliamangione.com
Born, raised and live in Kozani, Greece. Studied IT and Computer Engineer at Patras University and he is married with three children. A self-taught photographer whose work deals with documentary and fine-art photography. Street photography is present and obvious in many aspects as well. Attended photography seminars by Jacob Aue Sobol, Platon Rivellis and Paris Petridis.
Exhibitions:2022 Where The River Runs Mute, Photometria Festival, Ioannina/GR 2021 One World, 1st International Photo Festival, Drama/GR 2021 TOLERANCE(S), Lens-based media exhibition in the framework of Art + Culture vs Xenophobia Project, curated by Eleni Mouzakiti, Kostas Ioannidis, Athens-Norway 2016 HOME, Delmar Gallery curated by Aue Sobol and Sun Hee Engelstoft during Head On Festival, Sydney/Australia 2016 Cultural Landscapes, Group Expo, Athens/GR 2015 Family, Group exhibition at Benaki Museum, Athens/GR 2014 On-Off, Personal exhibition (home printing and framing), Kozani-Kastoria/GR
Awards and shortlists2022 Parallel Voices 2022, Photometria Festival, Ioannina/GR 2021 Urban Photo Awards Finalist (People’s category), Trieste/Italy 2017-2021 Honor Mentioned and Finalist at quite a few International Street Photo Festivals
@sakisdazanihttps://sakisdazanis.weebly.com/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/dazanis https://www.facebook.com/Sakis.Da
Sensitive to the cracks that our society is going through, her work focus on social issues and human bodies as territories. Celine uses film codes to transgress the world she’s looking at.
Her various works as a photographer and video artist were presented at the Billboard Festival in Casablanca (2015), the Marrakech Biennale in 2016, the Paraguay Biennale (El ojo Salvaje - 2018), the Tangier Photography Foundation (2019), the Dummy Award Photobook of Kassel and the Fuam Dummy Book Award from Istanbul in 2018.
In 2019, she is the winner of the In Cadaqués Festival with « SQEVNV », and the Revelation Price between Festival Map and Face à la mer.
In 2020, she is selected among 100 emerging European photographers by Gup magazine and Fresh Eyes Photo Talent 2020 (book published in July 2020) and she’s the winner of the Prix Mentor 2020 with « Mala Madre ».
In 2021, she’s one of the finalist of the HSBC prize 2021 with « SQEVNV » and will exhibited it in April at the Festival Instantes in Portugal.
Her work 'Nothing Hapenned' will be exposed in April 2021 at the Rencontres de la jeune photographie internationale de Niort (Villa Perochon). She’s also have been selected by Claudio Composti for the Leica Oscar Barnack, and she’s one of the laureate of the Tremplin Jeunes Talents of the Festival Planches Contact in Deauville 2021.
Sara Scanderebech (b. 1985) is a Milan-based photographer and visual artist. She studied Visual Arts at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts before beginning her career as a photographer at Galleria Carla Sozzani. Her work moves between art, fashion and design, involving close collaboration with a range of artists, brands and magazines. For Scanderebech, photography is a medium for investigating reality and creating new imaginaries. In her projects – which have been exhibited in a range of galleries and festivals – details of plants, animals, objects and bodies become new metaphors and contemporary symbols. Since 2017, Scanderebech has managed the bookshop at Paradise: a Marsèll concept store based in Milan.
https://www.sarascanderebech.com/
@sarascanderebech
Tina Farifteh is a Dutch-Iranian artist based in The Netherlands. She obtained master’s degrees in Economics and a bachelor’s degree in Arts. Thanks to this academic and cultural background, she is used to seeing the world from different angles.
She is a visual researcher whose work lies at the intersection between arts, politics and philosophy. Her interest lies in human nature and the politicization of ‘life’ – particularly, the administration and control of life. She is inspired by the work of philosophers Agamben, Foucault and Arendt. Specifically their concepts of ‘bare life’ and ‘biopolitics’.
In her work, she reflects on the impact of man-made power structures such as nation states and corporations on the lives of ordinary people. Often focusing on people stuck between the ‘natural’ life and the ‘conventional’ life. People not only excluded from the privileges granted by the ruling political and economic systems, but often damaged by these to make the system ‘work’. Her photographic approach is research-based and conceptual. Often combining images, text and data. The goal is to seduce us to look at topics that we prefer to look away from because of their complexity or discomfort.
In her earlier project Killer Skies (2018), she explored the impact of the ‘dronisation’ of armies. Currently she is researching and reflecting on the situation of refugees on the move or stuck at European borders. This work focuses on borders, bodies, and the political language used to normalize the absurdity of how we are currently dealing with these topics.
As an artist, she works across a wide range of media including photography, installations, textile sculptures, interventions into urban space, etc. since 2012.
Coline Jourdan, born in 1993, lives and works in Rouen, Normandy. She graduated from the National School of Art in Dijon in 2017. Her work has been shown in group and personal exhibitions (Nicéphore Niepce Museum as part of the Ateliers Vortex Photographic Print Prize in 2019 ; La Gacilly Festival, Baden, Austria, 2021; Artefacts, (Residence 1+2), Chapelle des Cordeliers, Toulouse, 2020; Les noirceurs du fleuve rouge, Full B1 Gallery, Rouen, 2019). In 2021, she received she received the Support for contemporary documentary photography from the CNAP, as well as individual aid for creation from the Normandy Region. The same year, she won the 50CC Air de Normandie artist grant.
She has been working for German media outlets since 2014 and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Documentary Photography.
In her personal projects she focuses on taboo topics, feminism and relationships. She likes to combine different media and material such as video, photography, archive images, sound and objects. In 2018 she was chosen as one of the most promising newcomers in German photography, the year after she was nominated for the C/O Berlin Talent Award. Her work ‚IGNOSCENTIA’ has been shown in numerous exhibitions internationally and she regularly gives talks and speeches.
Sina lives and works in Berlin.