Most of her long-term projects are focused on the aftermath of loss. Experiencing it herself she wants to draw attention to the issues people face. Projects on this theme include "Self-portrait with my mother", "Lost", "Reborn", and "Little Poland". Her long-term projects were nationally and internationally awarded. She won Magnum & Ideas Tap award and completed the internship at Magnum Photos office in New York City.
Karolina is an award-winning photographer with a master's degree in photography from the Polish National Film, Television and Theater School in Lodz. She is based in Poland and works on verity of her projects both locally and internationally.
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
At the heart of a grey spectre, from moonlight to basalt, from transparency to deep obscurity, bodies, all female, reveal their plasticity. Forget lascivious poses, postpone conventional attitudes or a complacent light: this is not her subject. Pascale Arnaud disturbs appearances, because in this age which she wishes to depict, defined implicitly between the ages of adolescence and adulthood, there is little room for clear lines and distinguishable outlines. She thus undertakes an exploration which is properly photographic, it is in the matter of the image itself that she sets about translating the reality of this age of becoming and emergence. No clue of the subject’s identity exudes from this grey envelope. The young girls are symbolic figures, caryatides of silver salts which brandish their desires. Tight compositions upon fragmented bodies, contorted poses and unmasked faces: this photographic manner brings to light, from these grey zones, the strength and the vulnerability at play, at a time when an individual enters alone into the world to find its foundation. A colossus with clay feet is seen from a low angle, reminding us of all of the ambivalence and uncertainty due at a time of great expectations.
Studied Art History and Film Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. In 2013 graduated from the Academy of Photography in Warsaw. From 2013 to June 2014 participated in the Mentorship Programme by Sputnik Photos. From 2015 to 2019 student of photography at the Institut of Creative Photography in Opava, Czech Republic. Participant of the 2nd cycle of PARALLEL - European Photo based Platform (2018-2019).
Her main projects are "Splinter", a story of people living in continuous disorder, "When Objects Are Always Similar” about visual parallels between pictures and „Firmly Pinch The Skin Together” about tension, pressure and balance in everyday life.
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.
Kölcsey Sára is a commercial and documentary photographer from Hungary, Pécs. She started her career at the age of 32, after she gave birth to her fourth child. She thrives on the opportunity to capture a story by framing complex scenes. She works on several long-term projects with subjects closely related to her own life events and experiences. As an artist and mother she captures the life of women, girls, and mothers. She strongly believes that they all deserve to be seen, and also to be heard.
The nature of the female body is also in her scope of interest: both what it stirs within and on the surface; its ability to create and grow life, its cyclical reminder that death is ever-present and, by the potency of 1st prize at the 42nd Hungarian Press Photo Competition: "Every day life" series category
Her work has been shown internationally and was featured in multiple printed and online publications. She was one of the artists selected to be part of Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2019 and was nominated for the Foam Paul Huf Award in 2021.
Her work A Blurry Aftertaste is part of the Government Art Collection and it was published as a book form as part of Paper Journal Annual 2019. In the last few years Eleonora has exhibited in galleries and museums such as L21 Gallery in Palma de Mallorca, South London Gallery and Borough Road Gallery in London, Leeds Art Gallery in Leeds, MAR Ravenna, National Museum of Gdansk, and festivals such as Circulations Festival in Paris and Format Festival in Derby.
She works editorially with The New York Times, The Telegraph, The Financial Times, Port Magazine, among others.
Agostini uses photography, video, performance and sculpture to tell stories that raise questions about the construction of personal identities and behaviours. Her work is strongly connected with the experience of our surroundings and she is interested in exploring how the relationships that we form inform who we are.
Through the study of preconceived structures, whether physical or psychological, Agostini aims to investigate the difficulties of how human experience is constructed and she is interested in finding a possible fracture within our socially constructed rules and the spaces we inhabit. Her work often starts from personal experiences andit is the result of a long process of internalization of memories and experiences that she re-elaborate and recontextualize to give it order and gain control over them. She is interested in the psychological action of reenactment used as a tool to investigate and gain insight into one’s life: re-enacting and re-imagining old memories and past experiences become a way to unfold and observe our personal histories.
Agostini refers to the every-day as a space full of potential and possibilities for quests, incorporating ordinary objects and activities within her images to express and navigate its different layers and meanings.
Over twenty years ago, Jaakko Kahilaniemi, who was barely eight at that time, inherited 100 hectares of forest. The abstraction which this represents for a child, is followed by an indifference which it evokes for an adolescent. After all, this is hardly very exotic for a Finn: forest covers more than 70% of the country, totalling 26 million hectares. Fairly recently, this photographer decided to return to this heritage in order to explore its twists and turns. This series, called 100 Hectares of Understanding retraces his journey towards an appropriation of this land which is too big for a single – young – man. Photography thus becomes the location where the experience of the landscape can be filtered as it is travelled through, physically, mentally, and sentimentally. These explorations blend physical crossings and digital incursions, photographed panoramas and painted landscapes. The photographer combines these vast misty lands with a still life of a small wooden log resting upon a scale, or simple twigs upon a black background: from the infinitely big to the infinitesimal, each photograph constitutes a piece of an important memory game whose perimeter, one might imagine, increases as the photographer walks and the man grows up.
Just as much a physical experience which disturbs the tranquil surface of the photograph as a workshop narrative with a documentary character, Laetitia Bica’s series Cream, cannot be confined to a single genre. Following two years of collaborations with the CREAHM workshop in Liège (Creativity and Mental handicap), she undertook two months of intense research with the workshop’s artists, the result of which is this corpus of disruptive and vibrant photographs. Collaboration, a creative process which is a daily part of this photographer’s life as she typically works on commission in the areas of fashion, music, and design, in these photographs is transmitted through the body. Gestures, colours and materials become elements of language during their creative exchanges. Thus unfolds a series of figures covered in paint with thick and bold features and accents that are at times wild, at times warlike. A few of the images, placed in a sequence, follow an artist’s movement, rendering the in progress nature of this experiment and indicating Laetitia Bica’s double position on what takes on the appearance of almost ritualistic practices: at the same time actor and master of ceremonies.
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
Her photographs have been shown and published in different media and communication such as El Diario.es, La Marea, ABC, El País, Vice, Grupo EFE, RTVE and TVG. Her work has been exhibited in cultural institutions such as the Cultural Center of Spain in Lima, Landkreis Galerie in Germany, Museum of Memory in Argentina, La Casa Encendida, National Calcografía, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Conde Duque Cultural Center, and Matadero in Madrid, Cristina Enea Foundation in Donostia or Cidade da cultura in Santiago de Compostela.
She has also exhibited in galleries in Madrid: Galería Zero, Galería Liebre, La New Gallery and Noestudio. International galleries such as Galería Moproo in Shanghai and Galería Ruby in Buenos Aires. Her work has been selected in different competitions, as well as national scholarships and artistic residences. Standing out the Resident Culture 2020, Best Photo Essay Lifestyle of the Ottawa International Vegan Film Festival 2019, 2017 VEGAP Creation Grant, Scholarships Abroad at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) of A Coruña 2015 and finalist in Fotopres La Caixa 2015.
Laure has exhibited her work internationally in Berlin (DE), Reykjavik (IS), Brussels (BE), Paris (FR), and soon in Stockholm (SE), Luxembourg (LU), and Osaka (JP). Her work has entered the collection of several foundations, such as the Fondation des Arts du Luxembourg and the Palais de Liège (BE).
Ugo Woatzi’s photographs reference real and imagined spaces caught between the worlds of freedom and constraint. He reveals and yet conceals, as a chameleon changes colour to blend in and survive. Ugo’s collaborative process is a reflection of the desires and struggles of his community. Together they create a more sensitive and accepting world, one that both escapes from and confronts the harsh realities of divisive heteronormative structures. The images, tender yet defiant, transmute feelings of love and of conflict, a relatable and universal sense of longing. His sensuous, quietly intimate gaze taps into subtler aspects of human desire — and yet these seemingly accessible emotions are simultaneously blocked in an act of obfuscation. His concealment of faces and identities evokes the fear, censorship and stifling experienced by queer communities across the globe.
Ugo invites us to consider and celebrate a range of masculinities, performative bodies, psyches, and experiences, as he explores the idea of “visibility” as one fraught with both fear and excitement. This duality is embodied powerfully in Ugo’s work, which is both a performance and a lived reality, the speaking of truths and the creating of fictions. That is the nature of photography: to create new worlds from fragments of previous ones. It is in this new world, in the sensitivity of Ugo’s gaze, that we finally access a space of acceptance.
- Text by Michelle Harris (.TIFF)
Simon Grunert (b. 1990) is a German photographer and graphic designer. He holds a Bachelor's degree in North American Studies and a Masters in Photography from the University of Applied Sciences Bielefeld and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Gent. With a focus on photobooks, Grunert utilises a documentary approach to build imaginary realms and topographies. His work has been exhibited in various institutions in Germany and France, and has featured in publications such as Camera Austria International.
Wbsite: simongrunert.com
Her work had been exhibited and screened at venues including États Généraux du Film Documentaire (Lussas, FR); KANAL – Centre Pompidou (Brussels, BE); Belo Horizonte International Short Film Festival (BR); Kasseler Dok Festival (Kassel, DE); Moscow Biennal (RU); Art Brussels (BE); FIDMarseille (FR) among others. Her first medium-length film 'No blood in my body' received the short film prize at Écrans Documentaires d’Arceuil (FR). Laure Cottin Stefanelli studied literature and cinema at the University of Paris III and graduated in Photo-Video from École des Arts Décoratifs de Paris.
"A strange pleasure emanates from Laure Cottin Stefanelli’s images, a pleasure that stems from the interruption of systems, the suspension of discipline. The characters she portrays often engage in the strictures of self-imposed rigour – marriage, high-level sports, addiction, erotic role play – and her camera emboldens them in their carefully planned choreographies. Not that these choreographies become, as a result, deconstructed or “unmasked”; rather she balances the individuals between desire and ritualised gesture, arresting them in seemingly affective fulfilment. Cottin Stefanelli leaves unsaid what lies outside the frame, where conventions and rules govern the protagonists’ behaviours (...). What remains in the frame, cropped out of context, ends up looking solitary, but also confident – one dares say beautiful. (...)" Antony Hudek on Centauresse
www.laurecottinstefanelli.com
Georgiana Feidi, currently based in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, is a visual artist whoachieved her photo video MA's degree from the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca in 2020. In her artistic approach, she uses both digital and analog tools, including post-processing and the hands-on exploration of darkroom and alternative photography techniques. In her artistic endeavors, Georgiana explores themes inspired by the mysteries of the universe, nature, personal insights and experiences. Her works reflect a journey into unexplored territories, creating visual narratives that transcend conventional boundaries of thought. Over the years, she has presented her work in solo exhibitions nationally, and participated in group shows across Romania and internationally, including cities like Dortmund, Melbourne, New York, and Rome. Her work has also been featured in various online publications both nationally and internationally.
Scarlat’s work has been recognised and awarded in several national and international competitions, such as PHotoEspaña, the Emerging Photographer Fund (Magnum Foundation), World Nomads, Promoción del Arte at Tabacalera Cantera, Visa pour l’image, Matera European Photography, Artistas Novos, and Creación Injuve. In 2021 he received a bookmaking scholarship at Magnum Photos. This year he also has received a long-term mentorship scholarship at Magnum Photos, and he is currently working with Gregory Halpern and Alessandra Sanguinetti for this project.
Scarlat has always been interested in working with his family from Romania. After leaving in 2005 at the age of 11 and having spent 15 years away, his relationship with them has changed. In his projects, he like to insist on those tensions and conflicts that have arisen as a result of moving to Spain. He is interested in Eastern Europe, Romania, alcoholics, his mother, religion, death, the traces of communism on people's faces, gypsies, children, the cemetery, the lake, wedding dresses, unmarried women, dead girls in wedding dresses, dead horses, boys playing soccer, abandoned dogs, funerals, weddings, enchantments, women who are going to clean the graves in the cemetery, flowers, gold…
Yana Wernicke is a German photographer. In 2021 her first photo-book, Zenker, a collaboration with Jonas Feige, was published by Edition Patrick Frey. She is currently working on a new project on the concepts of species loneliness and interspecies relationships.