Josef Janošík (b. 1995) is a photographer based in the Czech Republic. In his work, he searches for and relives his childhood memories – however corroded and unreliable they may be. Exploring the limits of human perception is important for him in general as well as the elusive uncertainty that lies behind them.
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.
For Sine Van Menxel, photography is the art of manipulating light and shadow. Since she works exclusively with black-and-white analogue photography, Van Menxel encounters the problem of light and shadow twice: first, in the moment of shooting and secondly when printing the final image in the darkroom. In both cases, she is fascinated by the possibilities and the limits of photographic technique in terms of manipulation and reproduction. While the moment of shooting mainly concerns the receiving and measuring of light, the work in the darkroom is a far more engaging moment: it is the phase where the photographer manipulates the projected light to create the final image. Although Van Menxel sometimes intervenes before taking a shot – for example, by staging the scene – the real challenges only arise in the second phase of the photographic process. For her, the darkroom is first and foremost an experimental environment where fortuitous discoveries occur and playful ideas are tried out. The tools that surround her (such as the magnets used for keeping the photographic paper flat against the wall) can transform from mere accessories to active agents in the creation of new and surprising images. Van Menxel often chooses not to retouch the prints, instead accepting the traces (specks of dust, stains, etc.) left behind on the image by the labour in the darkroom. The lucky coincidences created by a “failing” system alert the viewer to the image’s technological origin, thereby allowing Van Menxel to question the transparency of the medium. As such, her work is less about the subjects immediately visible in her images than about the visual possibilities created by exploiting and /or subverting the photographic method. Her work ensues from a sensitive alternation of action and surrender, of control and the loss of it. The result is a set of witty images made by a mischievous eye that is able to extract visual surprises from the most mundane situations.
Text by Steven Humblet
The escalating crisis in her home country of Venezuela has motivated her to produce Trevale’s ongoing recent piece “Venezuelan Youth”, which has been widely exhibited notably at her solo show at ThePrintSpace in London and at Vogue Italia’s Photo Vogue Festival this year. Through the progress in her MA, she has taken a closer look at the women of her family. As her work carries a nostalgic density towards her home and family, she returned to her childhoods memories and recent events. By collaborating with her grandmother Rosa and mother Maria, she explores the past of her great grandmother Cayetana. With the intention to celebrate her bravery as an indigenous woman and her roots. By, observing the Latin essence the women of her life grew up with.
Images are, for Nicole Rafiki, a thinking force. She produces imaginaries in a disparity of media, photography one of them. The normativity of thought comes from a multiplicity of machines of knowledge production, including but not limited to education, exhibition spaces, and the media. A social practice means interacting and constantly challenging the presupposed universal self such an information sphere produces. In a global economy and flow of disjunctive hierarchies and modes of being, culture moves in a disruptive way through the migration of people across borders, geographies, and time. Rafiki points to such complex and conflictual past, presentness, and future. The image, the imagined, the imaginary move from a world defined mainly by concrete purposes to structure negotiations and possibilities.
Her work has been recently exhibited in numerous venues, including JAP vitrine, Brussels (2023), IKOB Museum, Eupen (2023), Antwerp Art Weekend (2023), CIAP, Genk (2022), Centrale Vitrine, Brussels (2021), Frac Grand Large — Hauts-de-France, Dunkerque (2021-22), and S.M.A.K Museum, Ghent (2021). She has also gained international recognition through exhibitions in Paris, Germany, Athens, and Caracas.
In recent years, Padilla has been granted numerous residencies and awards including the Fiminco Foundation residency in Paris (2022-23) and long-term residency at Moussem Nomadic Art Centre in Brussels (2023-). She received the Sabam prize of ArtContest in Brussels in 2020, the prize of the Watch This Space biennial in Lille in 2022, and was one of the laureates of the Friends of S.M.A.K prize in Ghent in 2021. Her work is currently on view at The Kunstverein Friedrichshafen in Germany. In 2024, Padilla was selected for the MINO Female Artist Mentorship program with mentors Otobong Nkanga and Léonard Pongo, and will be part of the MLeuven residency program at Cas-co in Leuven and Morpho residency program in Antwerp.
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.
Vika Eksta (1987) is an artist based in Riga, Latvia. In her long-term projects, Vika combines the documentary and fictional. Most of her work reflects upon the artist's personal experiences - be it an exploration of a fictional identity or of a Latvian rural landscape. Vika's choice of medium depends on the idea of the project. She is skilled in photography, analogue photo lab work, performance for the camera and audiovisual archive research. Vika is the winner of the ADC Young Guns, FK Portfolio and Riga Photography Biennial awards for young Baltic photographers, and has been nominated for the Purvītis Prize. Since 2014, she has participated in exhibitions in Latvia and abroad, including at the Latvian National Museum of Art (2020, 2022), kim? Contemporary Art Centre (2019), Gallery Alma (2019, 2021), ISSP Gallery (2018), Kaunas Photography Gallery (2017) and many various festivals. Her work is held in the collections of Latvian National Museum of Art, Latvian Museum of photography and private collections.
www.vikaeksta.comhttps://www.instagram.com/ekstavika/
Nina Hansch is a photographer who works in classical photojournalism. Her documentary works are characterized by their nuances and a cinematic quality in her visual language. At the same time, she succeeds in emphasizing the socio-political relevance of her stories and in exploring their visual complexity.
"I am always curious about the facets and details of life and humanity. And often ask myself questions like: What are the decisions and circumstances that consequently made us who we are today?", explains the artist.
János R. Szabó (1992) was born and raised in Kömörő, a small village in the northeastern part of Hungary. This particular locale plays a major role in his inspiration as an artist.He completed her BA photography studies at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in 2018. He has been an active creator of the underground cultural segment of Budapest since 2018. Beyond his regular practice as a photographer he is in strong collaboration with the performance art scene of Budapest as performer and art director. He is invested in sociophoto and depiction of people, researching the patterns of human personalities, and the connection between memory and documentation.
With his interest in the glorifying and influential nature of photographs and images, Jeroen Bocken investigates the increasingly prominent role of hyper-idealised aesthetics in today’s world. Bocken is fascinated by natural science, human criteria and calculations and the limitations of the camera. He combines a variety of digital processes with natural patterns and algorithms. This experimental and associative process results in illogically constructed images. The photographer alternates these with classic “documentary” images – often iconic and familiar – to create an ambiguous context.
The interplay between real and constructed images requires vigilance. By playing these extreme methods off against each other, Bocken reminds us that an image never really shows the ultimate reality but is only capable of representing it. The image is a documentation, a snapshot and a notion of reality. It has the unequivocal power to steer our interpretation and perception in one direction.
New digital advances, such as 3D renders, mean that hyper-constructed images are being unleashed on the world at a dizzying rate. These immaculate, aesthetic and fabricated renderings are increasingly wrong-footing us and impacting on our perceptions. It is only with effort that we can distinguish the “picture perfect” from reality. Bocken is very intrigued by this ironic and surrealistic fact. By twisting and distorting the technical processing of his own images, and embracing the faults, Bocken explores the boundaries of our sense of reality.
Text by Eléa De Winter
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.
Patricia Morosan studied photography at the Ostkreuzschule in Berlin. In her visual poetic work, she negotiates the duality of intimacy and identity. Represented by Galerie Franzkowiak in Berlin, her work has been exhibited internationally, among which at Les Rencontres de la Photographie d‘Arles Voies Off, Fotohaus Paris-Berlin; Les Boutographies, Pavillion Populaire Montpellier; at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC), Bucharest; Haus am Kleistpark, Berlin; ICR Gallery Lisabon; Kommunale Gallery Berlin; Metamatic TAF, TV Control Center (KET), Athens; Atelier Varan, Paris; at 12-14 contemporary/FotoWien, Vienna; the Noorderlicht International Festival, Netherlands and at the Foto Forum, Bolzano. 2019 she won the Jury Award from Les Boutographies, Montpellier; and the Courage Prize of the Association of Women Journalists in Germany. She was nominated for the Art Prize of the Haus am Kleistpark in Berlin (2019), for the Wellcome Photography Award (2020), the Documentary Prize Wüstenrot (2020), Gomma Grant (2021), BUP Award (2022). She received various grants from: Initial Stipend from the Academy of Arts Berlin (2021) and various grant from the Berlin Senate for Culture and Europe. Her work is part of public collections, as the MNAC collection in Bucharest and the Ville of Montpellier, France and in several private collections in Europe.www.patriciamorosan.com
Poly’s art practice is merging her previous experience in documentary and staged photography. The photographer interprets cultural and visual codes of typical Ukrainian everyday life, predominantly in the fields of eroticism, fashion, and novel notions of beauty. The artist states that she finds herself constantly inspired by “trivial things, everyday events, stories from the lives of friends, and own experience”.
Julie Poly’s exhibitions serve as a continuation to her artistic message. Her ‘mockumentarian’ and slightly grotesque projects often come back to the areas of their genesis, like railway station (Ukrzaliznytsia series) or arcade centres (Kosmolot playing cards).
Exploring the boundaries between sculpture and photography, Vincent likes to gets his hands dirty. Among all the wood cut and the nail hammered, what he likes the most is to make you scratch your head. Let’s face it; we all get bored on the internet. Remember those magic hours spent playing with a woodstick when you were just a kids? Vincent is calling that up.
Duchateau is an artist who mainly works with photography. By applying a wide variety of contemporary strategies. His photos are an investigation into representations of (seemingly) concrete ages. By studying sign processes, signification and communication, he makes work that generates diverse meanings, associations and meanings collide. Space becomes time and language becomes image.
His works are characterised by the use of everyday events in an atmosphere of middleclass mentality in which recognition plays an important role.
By taking daily life as subject matter while commenting on the everyday aesthetic of middle class values, he plays with the idea of the mortality of an artwork confronted with the power of a transitory appearance, which is, by being restricted in time, much more intense. His works question the conditions of appearance of an image in the context of contemporary visual culture in which images, representations and ideas normally function. He makes work that deals with the documentation of events and the question of how they can be presented.Lars Duchateau currently lives and works in Hasselt and Ghent.
She directed her first short film, documenting the 'Fair' cashmere project which supports livelihoods of nomadic herding communities in the remote Gobi desert. Kerry has participated in solo and group exhibitions internationally, and has been selected as part of the 34th edition of the International Festival of Fashion, Photography, and FashionAccessories in Hyères.
Kevin Osepa is a photographer born and raised on the island of Curaçao. His work revolves around his identity and the identity of Afro-Caribbean youth in a post-colonial world. The visuals he creates and the stories he tells are highly influenced by his youth. While the themes he explores are autobiographical, his work can also serve as a quasi-anthropological study. Using different experimental techniques, he creates colourful visual stories that explore themes such as religion, African diaspora, and family.
Since graduating his work has been featured in numerous exhibitions, including Steenbergen Stipendium, Volkskrant Beeldende Kunst prijs, Unseen photography festival, FOAM Editions - as well as publications such as the Trouw newspaper, Volkskrant Magazine and Unseen Magazine. He was also nominated for multiple awards - in 2018, he became the youngest person ever to be nominated for the prestigious Volkrant fine art prize.