Ines Karčáková (*1993) is multimedia artist from Slovakia, based in Prague, Czech Republic. Her interest is in topics such as light, time, space, and disturbance of their mutual interrelationships.
She reflects on the qualities of the medium of photography through video installations in the space, which are often covered by appropriated visual material, in the long term. She is primarily interested in the changing specificity of photography - its original uniqueness is rapidly changing and today we can speak of it in terms of instability, ambiguity and untrustworthiness.
Recently, she has primarily focused on research in astrophotography, among on cosmic microwave background, or on the boundary between the rough telescope record and the aestheticized photography serving to popularize astronomy itself. Now, she is forming an arc over the schematic and romanticized visions of cosmic distances, coming back to much more terrestrial problems. Her current themes are the misbalance between the pace of technological development and its actual understanding, or the consequences of long-term neglect of environmental problems. She had several exhibitions in Slovakia, Czech Republic, but also abroad - for example in Budapest, New York or Düsseldorf.
In her works she often focuses on issues connected with migration or its destiny. She is mostly interested in the problematic of constructing identity and how people define themselves and the land of their origins. Recently she is involved in collective photographic research about polish migration to South America. It happens that she gets out of the material world and enters other dimensions of perceiving the world, exploring the paranormal events and believes not connected with any religious system. Finds collective creation as the best way for making photography as permanent process of putting individual thoughts in doubts.
She was born in 1990 by the Polish seaside in Gdańsk. Graduated in Photography on Academy of Arts in Poznań. She is also part of Ostrøv publishing collective.
In 2016 her book "The Modern Spirit Is Vivisective” won the ViennaPhotoBookAward. Her work has been presented and exhibited internationally, including Plat(t)form 2017, Fotomuseum Winterthur; Fotografia Europea, Reggio Emilia; Benaki Museum, Athens; Noorderlicht Photofestival, Groningen; Emerging Talents, MACRO Factory, Rome; Festival Circulations, CENTQUATRE-PARIS, Paris; and Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome.
Her latest work Petrus, published by Kehrer Verlag, reflects on a certain rhetoric of masculinity in Western culture. Through a cynical, tender and arbitrary analysis of what probably cannot be sliced and diced Francesca Catastini plays with archetypes and images considering the way they sculpt ourselves and shape our views. Looking for subtle discrepancies her images go beyond their figurative meaning in order to activate new analogies and connotations.
http://francescacatastini.it/
Agata is working as a freelance photojournalist and a cinematographer. Her work has been published in DER SPIEGEL, Stern, DIE ZEIT, SZ-Magazin, The Guardian, ARTE TV, ARD, NZZ, DUMMY Magazine, Greenpeace Magazine, Taz, BuzzFeed, Free Mens World, Spiegel Online, Zenith, SPIEGEL WISSEN, Politiken, Zeit Online, Gazeta Wyborcza, Newsweek.
Agata's projects have been supported by numerous grants, including: the Magnum Foundation, the Pulitzer Center, Journalismfund.eu, Robert Bosch Stiftung and VG Bild-Kunst.
Noémi Napsugár Melegh was born in 1990 in Budapest, Hungary, and is currently a full-time photojournalist for telex.hu, one of the largest independent news portals in Hungary. Although she has been interested in photography since she was in high school, she worked as a health economist for several years after having obtained her BA and MSc in Economics. During the past two years, she has participated in several international training courses: she was a fellow of the VII Academy Level 1 and Level 2 Documentary Photography Seminar, a participant of the Magnum workshop organised by the Robert Capa Center in Budapest, and a fellow of the Canon Student Development programme and of the prestigious Eddie Adams workshop in Jeffersonville, New York. Her true passion lies in creating long-form documentary projects that focus on personal stories and presenting the lives of local, marginalised communities. In 2023, she won 2nd place in the Documentary Photography (Series) category of the Hungarian Press Photo Contest with her work titled as "Gábor and Kálmán", which tells the story of two men living on the margins of the Roma community. In the same year, she was awarded the Hemző-Károly Prize, a prestigious yearly award for a photographer under 35.
Monika Orpik (b. 1997) is a visual artist from Poland, based in Hamburg. She holds a BA in Photography from London College of Communication, and is currently pursuing an MA in Photography at Hamburg’s Hochschule für bildende Künste. Approaching questions of reconciliation and dialogue in post-traumatic societies, her practice is research based, making use of archival materials, interviews, oral histories and artefacts. Her methodology involves working with specialists across various disciplines, including ethnography, anthropology, film and music. Since March 2022, Orpik has been a member of ABC (Artists’ Book Cooperative).
Website: monikaorpik.com
Dorota Franková is a Czech photographer finishing her studies of photography at the Libuše Jarcovjáková’s studio at the Faculty of Design and Art Ladislav Sutnar in Pilsen. She is engaged in various professions such as social worker in nursing home. In 2022, she devoted a photographic series in a hospice, where she encountered the passing of people to the other side. Here she interviewed dying people and documented their last moments. She has also been working on a documentary about her ailing grandmother for several years. She enjoys fashion photography and loves collaborating with musicians on their album booklets. A core part of her work is self-reflection and understanding emotional states and their reflection in photography.
Eva Maria Bouillon (b. 1997) currently lives and works in Bruges, Belgium. In 2019, she received a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts and Photography from the LUCA School of Arts, followed by a Master’s degree in 2020. Her work probes at the relationship between storytelling, family history and personal experience. In recent years, her work has featured in several group exhibitions and international film festivals.
Claudiu Guraliuc (b.1977) is a fine art photographer and educator based in Cluj, Romania. His work specialises in fine art portraiture and nudes, inspired by the aesthetics of Old Master paintings from the Baroque period. Guraliuc holds a Licentiate from the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, and has achieved numerous international accolades for his work; in January 2022, he received the International Master Photographer of the Year Award. His images have been published by a range of international photography magazines, and his work is found in both private and public collections in Europe, Asia and the United States. Guraliuc is represented by Katsea Art Gallery, Baltimore, and Influx Gallery, London.
Peggy van Mosselaar is a documentary and visual storyteller motivated by curiosity and human interest. Van Mosselaar creates photographic and video works based upon the stories and memories of the people she meets. The artist graduated from PhotoAcademy, Amsterdam and Foto Vakschool, Rotterdam. Peggy has exhibited at Loods 6, Amsterdam; Museum Hilversum, Hilversum; and SKVR, Rotterdam. In August-November 2022, she will present her work in FOTODOK’s group exhibition Part of Me… Shaping Mental Spaces.
In addition to her art and research, she works on commission for architects and public institutions. She is regularly published in architectural magazines (including Casabella, Domus, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’Hui, Le Moniteur). She gives tertiary lectures (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Florida International University, Polytechnic University of Milan, University of Genoa, Italian Institute of Culture - Addis Ababa) and leads workshops at a university level.
Her projects have been exhibited internationally, in art galleries and public institutions, such as La Triennale, Milan, Venice Architectural Biennale, Cornell University, Ithaca, MAO Ljubljana, and Villa Croce Museum of Contemporary Art, Genoa.
Anna is based in Genoa, Italy.
One often looks at the work of Arnaud De Wolf with a sense of disbelief. Is that image of a gigantic ice cube really floating in mid-air? Is that colourful picture of an ancient forest a realistic depiction or is it a digital fabrication, a fanciful re-creation? What are we meant to discern in his cyanotype prints: random blue lines surrounding white voids of various shapes and sizes or the contours of a mountainous landscape? By means of an unconventional presentation of the photographic image, simply turning it on its side or projecting it into a corner or using outdated techniques, such as the cyanotype, De Wolf presents us with works that hover between the clarity of description and the artificiality of invention. A projected bundle of light suddenly transforms into a three-dimensional object; abstract lines coagulate into a legible form; colours become deceitfully (un)real. In each of his experiments, De Wolf is testing the boundaries of the photographic system, looking for that breaking point where the photograph loses its readability and easy accessibility. His thorough investigation of colour is particularly revealing: Fading forest makes abundantly clear that colour in photography is always artificial. The colours that we see in a photograph are technologically and culturally coded; they are made in the chemist’s lab or produced by a programmer’s algorithm. Colour is here revealed as the manipulative garb in which the photographic skeleton is dressed.
Text by Steven Humblet
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
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/
Andrey Anro (born 1987 Smarhon, Belarus) Lives and works in Berlin, Germany / Minsk, Belarus. His basic tools are painting, photography, digital collage, and installation. Anro explores topics such as collective memory, historical heritage, politics, dictatorship, religion, disappearance and death. He is author of the photobook "Happy Death Society", 2019.
The artist's works are in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow(MOCAK), Poland, in the ART4 Museum in Moscow, in private collections in Lithuania, Sweden, Canada, Russia, and the USA. In 2007 he graduated from MMT L.B. Krasina (Moscow, Russia), speciality "Advertising".
Lukáš Opekar focuses on photography and moving images, which he transforms into virtual environments, hand-printed graphics, and cyanotypes. He explores the limits of photography using methods of computer vision, but also through algae growth or drawing. Using random processes he discovers extraordinary worlds that hide behind the commonly perceived reality. He cultivates images from fragments, and the result that emerges from this substrate is largely a surprise. A long-term theme of his work is the exploration of the intermingling of living and non-living beings over time. He studied at Faculty of Art and Design Jan Evangelista Purkyne University in Ústí nad Labem and he lives and works in Prague.
Kwabena Sekyi Appiah-nti (b. 1994) is a Belgian-Ghanaian photographer based in Amsterdam. Straddling the boundaries of documentary and fashion photography, his projects reveal a fascination for people who face societal prejudice, aspiring to cut through the clichés of stereotyped representation. Delving into his subjects’ worlds and observing their behaviours, Appiah-Nti documents their true essence; he describes ‘boyhood’ as the overarching theme in his work.