Marta Szymanska is a photography curator from Poland. She has been creating Fotofestiwal - International Festival of Photography in Lodz since 2004 and Fotofestiwal Collective since 2017. She gained experience in curatorial work and organizational management as vice president of the Archeology of Photography Foundation (2014-2019) which which is dedicated to preserving photographic archives. Marta cooperates also with Sputnik Photos, the collective of photographers from Central and Eastern Europe. Her curatorial experience includes exhibitions: “Tender Attention” (2021, Museum of Art in Lodz), “Long life for Belarus” (2021; Pilecki Institute in Berlin, Festival of Journalism in Insbruck, Austria), “Be a Lady - contemporary woman photographers in Belarus” (2020, Month of Photography in Minsk), „On the Verge” (2022, 2023; Fotofestiwal Lodz; Camera - Centro Italiano per Fotografia, Torino; Copenhagen Photo Festival).Marta is an active portfolio reviewer and she supports artists in their creative process. She graduated with a degree in literature and language studies, so she is particularly interested in building relationships between photographs and text in a project. In addition, she is interested in activist and engaged practices, archive-based projects and photography from Central and Eastern Europe.
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.
His photos combine powerful visuals with compelling stories. He got published by National Geographic, Washington Post, CNN and stern.
After studying aeronautics in Italy, Walter Costa realised that the pilot career was less “romantic” than he thought. In 2009, while completing a degree in Politics and International Studies at Complutense University in Madrid, he started attending photography courses at Blank Paper school, where he also got involved in publications and editing. Studying their postgraduate programme in documentary photography gave him the opportunity to start merging image-making with his interest in visually investigating social issues in relation to power imbalances. Love and curiosity made him move to São Paulo in 2013, where besides working as a news and commercial photographer he started teaching editing and bookmaking while collaborating with several Brazilian and international authors in the development and editing of their photobook projects. In 2017 Costa founded Havaiana Papers, a distribution platform aimed at improving the circulation of Brazilian photobooks. As a curator, he was invited to organize a series of performatic lectures about photobooks for SOLAR Fotofestival (Fortaleza, BR) in December 2018 and was the guest curator of the sixth edition of En CMYK-Photobook Meeting organized by the Montevideo Center of Photography (UY) in March 2019. In 2018 Costa came back to Europe to join the first cohort of the MA Photography&Society at KABK/Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. With the aim of researching, discussing and finding new ways to use photography as a tool for public debate, he completed the program with a wider and more multi-disciplinary practice. In 2020-2021, the artist took part in FOTODOK’s talent support programme Lighthouse. Still based in The Netherlands, Costa keeps editing photobook projects while teaching at KABK and developing his personal projects.
Katerina is an artist based in Athens. She leads a lens-based practice that explores the relationship between space and narratives through long-term research projects. An exploration that expanded and developed during her decade long scenography practice, and evolved into incorporating a different medium. Her work often utilizes public oral archives, fragmented narratives and the spaces they inhabit to retell stories that have been silenced or misrepresented.Her first monograph, “The Fumes of Mars” will be published by GOST Books in the Summer of 2025. This work has won The Format Reviewers Choice Award 2022, was featured in the printed and online issue of the British Journal for Photography (BJP) that was presented in Paris Photo ‘21, was selected and featured for the COCA Project 2021, was shortlisted for the Belfast Dummy Award and Festival ’22, and was exhibited at LCC in London as part of the “Common Ground” Exhibition.She holds a BSc in Mathematics & Theoretical Physics from Imperial College London, a BA in Design for Performce from Central Saint Martin’s and a MA with Distinction in Photojournalism & Documentary Photography from LCC.
Karim El Maktafi (Desenzano del Garda, 1992) is an Italian Moroccan photographer based in Milan. In 2013 he graduated at the Instituto Italiano di Fotografia in Milan. In 2016, he obtained a one-year scholarship at Fabrica, Benetton's communication research center in Treviso.
During his residency period, El Maktafi made the project Hayati and, one year later, won the PHMuseum 2017 Grant - New Generation Prize. With the same project, El Maktafi has been finalist of the CAP Prize 2017 (Contemporary African Photography prize) and second prize at the Kassel Dummy Award 2018. In 2017 he won a mentorship with the American photographer Maggie Steber (VII Agency), while in 2018 he gets the Magnum Photos scholarship with Alex Majoli.
Karim works on long-term projects between Italy and Morocco exploring concepts as identity and sense of belonging through documentary and portrait photography. His work has been exhibited at La Triennale Museum in Milan, Museum in Der Kulturbrauerei in Berlin, Pavillon Populaire in Montpellier, Macro Testaccio Museum in Rome and in other photography festivals in Europe, as well has been published, among others, on The Washington Post Magazine, National Geographic USA, Internazionale, Vice, GEO.
www.karimelmaktafi.com
Nolwenn Brod is a French artist based in Paris. She has studied humanities and social sciences, and trained in photography in London and at the Ecole des Gobelins in Paris. She is a member of the Vu Agency and represented by the eponymous gallery in Paris since 2016.
She develops her projects most often in the context of creative residencies in France and Europe where she mixes photography and video; and responds to commissions for the press and institutions. Her works are regularly exhibited in France and Europe and are included in the collections of the Bnf (French National Library), the Cnap, the Nicéphore Niépce Museum, the Museum of Brittany, the Villa Noailles, the Agnès b. collection, the Neuflize OBC Foundation, art libraries and private collections.
Her first book was published by Poursuite Editions in 2015, the second is in preparation.
Laura San Segundo (b. 1990) studied Fine Arts at Madrid’s Complutense University, followed by an MA at Efti International School of Photography and Cinema. Her personal projects have since run alongside commissioned work and a series of teaching roles. A recipient of various scholarships and residencies, Segundo’s projects have been exhibited internationally. With a playful but thoughtful methodology, her work makes conceptual connections between different image types, exploring their many layers of meaning – and how their meaning can be altered by visual strategies like cropping, fragmenting and decontextualising.
Raphaëlle Stopin (1978, France) is an exhibition curator and art historian.Director of the Centre photographique Rouen Normandie, which has been awarded the title of centre d'art d'intérêt national, she has developed a programme of contrasting exhibitions that reflects the specific nature of photography, caught between art and media. She brings together experimental practices and media uses, contemporary and historical figures, each working to develop unique narratives of the world. She has curated solo exhibitions by Evelyn Hofer, Dana Lixenberg and Lorenzo Vitturi, as well as group shows such as "La Rose est sans pourquoi", "À fleur de monde - à propos du toucher", "Le Parti pris des choses" and "À tire d'aile, figures de l'envol". If images are the ‘major language’ of our contemporary societies, what else can authors who choose photography do? Observing and supporting ‘minor’ forms of artistic expression is a key part of its programming. As part of this, it is also developing grants and residencies to support creation, production and professional development. In 2022, she devised the Frutescens programme for young artists on the French photography scene, as part of the European photography platform FUTURES, of which the Centre photographique Rouen Normandie is the French representative. From 2003 to 2020, she worked with the Villa Noailles as artistic director of the photography competition at the Festival International de Mode et de Photographie in Hyères, with a particular focus on the so-called emerging scene, combined with the rediscovery of historic artists.A specialist in the work of William Klein, she has produced five retrospectives of the artist ( Abbatiale de Rouen, 2016; Telefonica Foundation, PhotoEspaña, Madrid, 2019; Catalunya Foundation - La Pedrera, Barcelona, 2020; Museum Hanmi, Seoul, 2023; MAC Montélimar, 2024) as well as an exhibition dedicated to Polly Maggoo (Villa Noailles, 2016). In 2024, she was invited by Paris Photo to curate ELLES X, an exhibition promoting the representation of women artists. She is secretary of Diagonal, a French national network of venues for the dissemination of photography.
She is primarily involved in such documentary photography and projects which allow her to have a long-term cooperation with a given community and document their daily lives objectively without loosing the possibility of subjective associations. Her series are mostly concerned with rural life due to her personal involvement.
After growing up in a small village in the Eastern part of Hungary before moving to Budapest for her studies, the young photographer began to observe more objectively and systematically document the things around her.
Ksenia Ivanova is a documentary photographer based in Berlin, Germany. Her work focuses on themes of trauma, explored through long-term storytelling. She was a finalist for the Leica Oskar Barnack Award (2024) and the Picture of the Year, Online Storytelling (2021), and won the Lucie Foundation Documentary Award (2023).
Ksenia's projects have been featured in The Washington Post, Courrier International, XXI Revue, and Der Spiegel. She has also contributed to The New York Times, Zeit Online, Le Monde, Libération, and GEO France, among others.
Pavo Marinović (b. 1995) is a photographer and visual artist who lives and works between France, Switzerland and the Balkans. In 2020, he graduated with a BA in Photography from Lausanne’s ECAL. His work has since been shown at Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, Fotomuseum Winterthur, and Paris Photo, amongst others. Traversing fields of identity, conflict, and collective memory through photography, video and installation, Marinović’s practice explores the state of a territory in transit, as well as its social effects.
The DUNA group is an open collective of artists (Lenka Bakes, Ladislav Kyllar, František Svatoš) focusing on themes of the future topics such as ecology and technology. Adaptus is a speculative project in which we explore the borders of humanity and complexity of fragile relationship network between various entities.
DUNA has presented in a number of solo exhibitions, presented the first volume of the Adaptus series in 2019 as part of the 4+4 Days in Motion festival in Prague, and has continued to develop the series through the NoD exhibition in Prague and online platforms. The Duna group was included by the French publication NONFICTION 02 on Nature, among a selection of artists born after 1980 setting the trends of the future, with recent works presented by Duna in the exhibition HOLY MATTER at Below Grand in NYC and in the exhibition Baitball at Polignano a Mare Italy.
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