Sebastián has used different disciplines such as photography, writing, sound and video to explore a variety of topics related to fiction, poetic strategies and landscape.
He also has published two books of literary fiction. The first, Tartamudo, published in Colombia, addresses the issue of stuttering from a choppy and fractionated writing. The second, The Secret Sound of the Stars, published in Mexico, is a children's book that tells the story of a kid who doesn´t sound at all.
On the other hand, Sebastián has been a professor of photography and art processes in Colombia and México.
He lives and works in Madrid, Spain.
Noémi Szécsi (b. 1998) is a half-Hungarian, half-Romanian photographer, currently living in Budapest. She studied photography at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest, from which she holds an MA. A member of the Studio of Young Photographers, Hungary, Szécsi’s projects are centred on specific groups of people living on the margins of society – from gravediggers to far-right protesters, to the witches she is currently working with. Her conviction is that the medium of photography offers no universal truths, but it does maintain a mediating and sensitising power. For the artist, the camera is a passport to the places where she interacts with people, allowing her to experience these different positions.
Lia Darjes was born in Berlin in 1984 and grew up in Hamburg. She studied with Ute Mahler at HAW in Hamburg and then as a master class student with Ute Mahler and Ingo Taubhorn at Ostkreuzschule in Berlin, where she started teaching in 2018. Her work has been exhibited in Germany, France, Canada, Russia and Switzerland and published in national and international media such as M, le Monde, and CNN. She has received various scholarships and awards, including the young talent award of the Art Prize of the Lotto Foundation Brandenburg.
Her work 'Tempora Morte' is an authentic documentary still-life study from the unofficial roadside-market of Russia's little exclave Kaliningrad.
He grew up in a small post industrial town of Belgium where his grandparents as well as many other south Italian families emigrated to work in the coal mines.
He received his first camera from his father at 9 years old while visiting his family in Cameroon. From there, he starts documenting life around him, finding inspiration in the richness and texture of the communities that made him.
He wishes for his photography to be a modest look at his own experience of life.
He graduated from the Film and Theatre Faculty of the “Babes-Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca, majoring in Cinematography, Photography and Media. He published his first photo album called “Beyond light and shadows” in 2017, an album comprising miscellaneous pieces of his work up to that time. Just like Nietzsche he believes that life without music would be a mistake. Films, books and cats are just some of the activities he likes to indulge in. His daughter Ida was born in 2018 bringing about a totally different perception of life and the way he looks at the stars.
He is interested in the image and imbrication of this medium with other disciplines such as sculpture and installation. As well as visual media, music and the creation of scenography and environments. Trying to convey an experience, an event or a state of mind is his main excuse when developing a project.
He investigates the relationship between the individual and his environment, about the spaces we inhabit and about contemporary forms of domestic life and the state of the objects that inhabit an era of wild mediatic reproduction. His work process is based on finding, combining and remixing poor materials, found objects and waste, signs that encourage him to experiment with new ways of interpreting what surrounds us.
More: https://christianlagata.com/
Rami’s work is visually striking. The objects of his portraits are statuesque, almost sculptural and hold a quiet dignity, these aforementioned fabrics (the Veil, the Durag) are elevated from their utilitarian role into markers of adornment. A hijab becomes a royal veil, a durag transforms into the crown of a young, anonymous king, A portrait becomes a painting.His use of colour elevate the text in a variety of ways. His work brings a dynamic element of emphasis, playing on the themes of alienation, anonymity and the question of belonging. the pops of vivid colours bring a sensation of playfulness, while some images use the richness of deep blues, purples and gold tones that bring forth a sense of mystery, a world where the viewer is not entirely welcomed but granted a glimpse of what the (un)veiling allows. He presents his family, his source of inspiration with deference, honouring them in portraits that beam with a sense of pride. The questions of stigmatisation and alienation starts in ‘Hooyo’, and re-occurs in his ongoing series « Durag », taking a step back in Indaha qurbaha, (In the eyes of the diaspora) by showing his subjects up close and personal as well as in their contextual spaces respectively.
With additional background in gender studies & activism Marta’s artistic work focuses on geopolitical and social issues, gossip & fiction, as well as personal experiences. She experiments with various media including participatory workshops and sound installations..
Marta’s work was shown e.g. at OBSCURA Festival of Photography in Malaysia, at TIFF Festival in Wroclaw, at ODESA PHOTO DAYS 2020, BLICA - First Biennale of Arts in Lebanon. Photobook presenting SHIFTERS project is shortlisted for Mack First Book Award 2020. She was selected for several residencies, most recently Landskrona Foto Residency (2020), as well as Nida Art Colony, Gasworks, and Botkyrka Konsthal. She took part in ‘Re-Tooling Residencies Project’ organised by CCA Warsaw. She created & curated ‘Fenix Cities: workshops and exhibitions in Warsaw and Beirut’.
www.martabogdanska.com
Katerina Moschou moves fluidly between sculpture and photography, with printmaking and painting forming the core of her practice. Her multidisciplinary approach allows her to transfer characteristics from one medium to another, shaping an evolving artistic language.Observing both human-made and natural environments, she captures their intricate relationships and translates them into material and form. Her work highlights the peripheral, uncovering interactions between living and non-living entities while bringing overlooked narratives into focus.Katerina studied Fine Arts at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and École Supérieure d’Art | Dunkerque-Tourcoing. Her first photobook, How to Drive, a collaboration with Zoetrope Athens, received the Polycopies & Co Grant (Paris, 2022), won the ArtsLibris Banc Sabadell Award (Barcelona, 2023), and was shortlisted for the PhotoESPANA Best Photography Book Award (Madrid, 2023). How to drive has been featured in renowned bookstores across Europe and the U.S. Her work has been exhibited in Poland, Italy, and France.
“Can a cardboard disc be mistaken for the moon? Could a streak of paint be perceived as a beam of light?” In her series Light of Other Days, Ann Vincent experiments, fails, plays around and messes with our perception of reality. We are confronted with familiar scenes that we often fail to notice: a puddle of water, a sunbeam on the pavement… In Light of Other Days, Ann Vincent sets out to recreate these fleeting moments in her studio and capture them in photographs. The appearance of a rock in the sand is replicated using industrial chemical components. Each image is painstakingly produced, the result of a tireless pursuit of the right materials, lighting conditions and framing. The process is chaotic but the final image seemingly perfect. Bringing the work to the exhibition space, Vincent continues her game: she cleverly places the photographs in unexpected corners, behind a staircase or floating in front of a window. The photographs become sculptural and encourage the viewer to move around and discover what lies beyond the image.
Ann Vincent plays a trick on us, and in doing so, touches upon one of photography’s most fundamental properties: its disturbing relationship with reality. This body of work is an illusion, disclosing its poetic magic only to the attentive viewer.
www.annvincent.be
Her personal work is often photographic, but this is not an exclusive relationship. On the basis of her projects, there is very often a question: How do the campers manage the nearness with their peers (Hidden Living)? Why do some Chinese prefer to live in a false Parisian avenue rather than in a traditional hutong (Abroad is too far)? What is the counterpart that urges a person to gulp down mass amounts of food enough to hurt their body (Rotten Potato)? Where is our relationship with food and our body rooted (To tell my real intentions, I want to eat only haze like a hermit)? Behind these questions lies a desire to understand a social phenomenon. And humor is not excluded.
She also pays very special attention to actively involve people she works with in the construction of the projects.
Her work has been awarded with various prizes, publications and exhibitions in Belgium and abroad. She also took part in artistic residencies (China, France, Japan).
In 2020 she won the photography scholarship of the Association of Hungarian Photographers. In the same year she was among the winners of Carte Blanche Students, a scholarship founded by Paris Photo, the world's greatest photo art fair. The works of the four winners were exhibited at the Parisian Gare du Nord. Her diploma series, entitled "Three Colours I Know in This World," was chosen for the 10 New Talent 2020 programme by the curators of BredaPhoto Festival and was exhibited in The Netherlands.
Her work is often applauded by the foreign press. Also her photos are part of the Blurring the Lines 2020 issue. From 2020 she is represented by TOBE Gallery, Budapest.
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
Verena has a deep interest in personal histories and narrative storytelling. Intrigued by the way cultural and political factors influence one’s life, she uses her lens-based practice to shed light on inner life and everyday “reality” in intimate settings. The encounter with the subject is the core of and the fuel for her work. To a large extent, Blok’s photography and video work is driven by the complex, paradoxical, tragic, and sometimes humorous set of social and cultural relations that form everyday life in Poland. As a Dutch-Polish dual citizen raised in The Netherlands and The United States, Blok has a keen awareness of her position moving between East and West. By coming close to her subjects and embedding herself for stretches of time, she uses these locations as her studio, a backdrop to the narratives that both artist and subject become part of.
Naina Helén Jåma (b. 1991) is a south Sami photographer, vytnesjæjjah and storyteller from Snåase, Norway. With an education in photojournalism – she has worked as both a photojournalist and photo editor for various newspapers and news agencies in Norway and Sweden – documentary approaches characterise much of her work. Among others, her images have featured in VG, Aftonbladet, Aftenposten, The New York Times, The Guardian, Huffpost, and Dagens Industri. Jåma is also a member of the Sami Artist Association.
Lucas Leffler revisits the past. Starting with stories rooted in reality, his projects focus on silver as a source of inspiration and discovery.
Zilverbeek (or Silver Stream) (2017–2020) is a dreamlike investigation of a man who collects mud from a stream in order to extract the precious white metal from it. The silver was the result of years of photosensitive emulsions being discharged into the water from the Agfa-Gevaert factory. The artist documents, deconstructs then reconstructs, history, brilliantly reshaping time and our perception of it to give us an oblique look at photographic materials.
His second work, Crescent (2019–2020), is a speculative study of the scientific and esoteric significance of silver. Here, the artist delves into something that fascinates him: the moon’s influence on the metal. His attempts to synthesise it result in photograms of sculptural objects and the sky — as though the heavens were being radiographed.
For Lucas Leffler, the shoot provides tangible evidence that a fantastical story — the pretext and context for his journeys — is true. He subjects this evidence to an experimental process involving chemicals and manipulation of the film and the subjects, thus creating a synthetic version of reality: one that transcends facts, muddies the path, and allows viewers to come to their own conclusions.
- Text by Emilia Genuardi (.TIFF)