A belarusian photographer working with documentary and conceptual photography. Graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of the Belarusian State University шт Minsk. Graduate of the Academy of Documentary Photography and Photojournalism “Photographics”, St. Petersburg, Russia. Scholar of Gaude polonia fellowship supporting the Ministry of Culture of Poland. Participant of personal and group exhibitions in Belarus, Lithuania, Georgia? Russia, Poland. Publications: Bird in Flight, F-Stop Magazine, Takiedela.ru, republic.ru, Private, SEEN Magazine.
In my work I focus on the theme of the culture of remembrance; I worked on projects about the place of mass shootings near Minsk by the Soviet authorities in the 30s and 40s, and about the liquidators of the Chernobyl disaster as a reclaimed material of the tragedy and the consequences of building a new nuclear power plant with Russian loans. I use digital and analogue photography, as well as collages and archive photos. In early drafts talked about personal transformation. I lived in Minsk, work as a journalist for a Belarusian portal Reform.by, had to leave Belarus in 2021 and currently live in Poland. Here I continue my journalistic work and at the same time shoot a project about forced migration, using my family, which was split up in 1939, as an example. My project deals with private and general questions: about the particular "homelessness" of people from traumatic periods of history and attempts to get rid of this feeling, about the sensitivity of entire nations as a result of political decisions, about the problems of self-identity, about the search for home.
Yana Kononova (b. 1977) has an academic background in social sciences, and holds a PhD in sociology. She was born on Pirallahi island in the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan – now an important site of oil extraction. During the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, her family emigrated to Ukraine. Having later relocated to the countryside of the Trachtemiriv peninsula, Kononova turned to photography. She graduated from the Photoschool of Viktor Marushchenko before following a photography course organised by the Image Threads Collective (USA). In 2019, Kononova won the Bird in Flight Prize in emerging Photography, and in 2022 was the recipient of the Hariban Award, presented by Benrido. Her works have been exhibited in Ukraine and abroad.
In 2020 Erien Withouck’s fascination for overlooked figures and myths led her to the Shetland Isles. Several islanders told her of the mythical “Selkie”, a hybrid creature which has the ability to remove its seal skin and take on human form. On Midsummer’s eve, a female Selkie emerges from a foaming sea and sheds her seal skin. A man sees her on the shore: he carelessly steals her skin and makes her his wife. Always longing for the ocean, the Selkie prefers the freedom as a seal to her expected role as a good mother and housewife, she eventually reclaims her skin and returns to her former home.
This myth is the sort of transient tale that chimes with Withouck’s aesthetic and sensibility. The antagonism between the fleeting nature of oral history and the desire to capture things permanently on film raises an important question: what do we wish to remember, and what would we rather forget? A literal reconstruction of the past is neither useful nor appropriate. The camera offers the chance to play, to intersect the paths of history and imagination.
Her photographs illuminate the traces of these unknown figures and mythical creatures which escaped the pages of history books, subtly capturing the unwritten habits, routines and cultures that still slumber on in remote communities. In scenes that beautifully evoke the fisherman’s world of pounding waves and craggy cliffs, the sea – with its continuous ebb and flow between eternity and fluidity – is clearly the protagonist. This ambiguity is exposed in the imagery of Erien Withouck.
- Text by Dagmar Dirkx (.tiff)
Marie Hervé (b. 1996) is a visual artist and author, currently living between Turin and Marseille. Evolving between Southern France, Italy, Greece, the Maghreb and the Middle East, her work explores Mediterranean landscapes through notions of memory and ruin, the politics of conservation, and historical constructions. The use of the document, the limits of truth and falsity in photography, and the relationship with our personal archives are recurrent motifs in her work – from archaeological museum collections to images compulsively recorded on mobile phones. A co-founder of the collective and publishing house MYTO, Hervé’s work has been exhibited in a series of exhibitions throughout France.
Instagram: marieanneherve
Website: marie-herve.com
Tanja Engelberts (b. 1987) lives and works in The Hague, the Netherlands. In recent years, Engelberts has worked on several projects related to the fossil fuel industry, focusing on the ways in which energy production shapes our landscapes. In 2021, she concluded a two-year residency at Amsterdam’s Rijksakademie. She has participated in further residency programmes at The Banff Center for Arts and Creativity (CA), The Ucross Foundation (USA), IK Foundation (NL) and Örö Residence (FI). Exhibited and published internationally, Engelberts’ works are also included in the collections of De Nederlandsche Bank (NL), De Brauw (NL) and Clifford Chance (UK). She is represented by Caroline O’Breen Gallery, Amsterdam.
Although none of Stockburger’s works were actually shot in the United States, the country and its myths are central to his photographic work. By photographing the global outcome of the power projection of the United States Stockburger is mapping the country from the outside.
In his work „Why Quit Our Own To Stand Upon Foreign Ground?“ he is documenting the closure of the U.S. Army Garrison in his German hometown Schweinfurt. Stockburger’s follow-up work アメリカ(Amerika) examines the U.S. influence on post-war Japan.
Currently he is working on a photographic juxtaposition of the development and use of the atomic bomb.
Balázs Szigligeti is a Budapest-based photographer, who studied at The Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design. His work explores the boundaries between reality and fantasy. With a foundation in digital post-processing techniques, he establishes a kind of dreamworld; his artworks celebrate the human body, plasticity, queer culture, his hedonistic friends and life itself.
Instagram: szigligetiphotography
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.
The work of Eline Benjaminsen (NO, 1992) studies the lacking visuality of socioeconomic processes and how this effects our ability to engage with them. She deals with the challenge of perceiving market processes through photographic follow-the-money narratives that combine prints, video and text in mixed media installations.
In 2017 she graduated from the Royal Academy of Art The Hague (Department of Photography) with the project Where the money is made - Surfaces of algorithmic capital about the infrastructure of algorithmic stock trading. The project was awarded the Steenbergen Stipendium (2017) and was nominated for the Zilveren Camera category Prijs voor Storytelling (2018) along multiple other nominations. She collaborates with a variety of platforms, from museums and galleries to the financial press.
The latest exhibits of her work include Stroom (NL), FOTODOK (NL), Lianzhou Foto Festival (CN), Heden (NL) and Krakow Photomonth (PL).
Sergey Melnitchenko was born in 1991 in Mykolayiv, Ukraine. Started photography in 2009. In 2018 – founder of school of conceptual and art photography MYPH. Member of UPHA – Ukrainian Photo Alternative. In recent years, he has participated in more than 100 solo and group exhibitions around the world. Winner of Ukrainian and international contests including “Leica Oskar Barnack Award Newcomer” in 2017 (Berlin), “Photographer of the Year” in 2012, 2013 and 2016 (Kyiv, Ukraine), “Golden Camera” in 2012 (Kyiv, Ukraine). Shortlisted for Krakow Photomonth in 2013 and Pinchuk Art Center Prize in 2015, among others. Participant of “Paris Photo”, “Volta Art Fair”, “Photo L.A.”, Photo Basel, etc. Nominated on “Foam Paul Huf Award” in 2020. Sergey’s works are in private and public collections in USA, Hong Kong, Ukraine, Russia, Poland, France, Germany, Belgium, Lithuania and Czech Republic.
By combining personal photographs with found imagery and hand-made collages with 3d printing processes, Giovanna creates imaginary landscapes inspired by surrealist paintings virtual realities and ancient cultures. Influenced by museum displays and catalogues, Giovanna populates these landscapes with her own collection of surreal artefacts. The received view of ancient objects is deliberately distorted. A recurrent feature of her work is the juxtaposition of futuristic and primordial scenarios and the combination of historical and fictional elements.
As an artist, João Ramilo aims to document human intervention in the world, capturing theinteraction between them. The essence of his work is to portray social and economic issues through images and immortalize those moments in time.Currently, he resides in Lisbon and works as a freelance photographer.
Riccardo Svelto (Florence, 1989) is currently based in Florence, where he works as a professor and freelance photographer. Svelto is graduated from the BA Photography at LABA (Libera Accademia di Belle Arti) in Florence (2015).
He has been the winner of the FOLIO International Online Photobook Masterclass (2020) by PhMuseum & Witty Books. In 2021, Witty Books published his first photobook entitled La Cattedrale. His work has been selected for Giovane Fotografia Italiana GFI 2022, exhibition in Fotografia Europea Festival 2022. At the same time, his work is featured in printed and online publications like Ignant, i-D, Booooooom, VOSTOK magazine and others.
His work is mainly focused on the relationship between empathy and social dynamics, trying to understand the emotional interaction and mind shapes we all face at the different ages and circumstances of life.
After having displayed her work for the first time at Plat(t)form 2015, held at the Fotomuseum in Winterthur (Switzerland), she was asked to display her work on the occasion of the Fotopub Festival in Novo Mesto (Slovenia) and at Circulation(s) in Paris. In 2015, she was shortlisted for the Francesco Fabbri Prize for her work Lay Out. Over the last year and a half, she has concentrated exclusively on her own personal research, focusing on the creation of new series and projects. Se has been selected for Fotografia Europea 2017. Since 2016 she has been represented by Viasaterna.
The daughter of Chinese emigrants living in Canada, Teresa Eng had an imaginary and fantastical vision of China, until she decided to visit the country. The degree of difference between the Chinese dream that she had constructed and the reality of a country undergoing a frantic development, might have resulted in a documentary which would not have spared us the excessive nature of contemporary China. On the contrary, Teresa Eng, chose to avoid the obviousness of a documentary and the stylistic clarity this entails. Her China seems to evolve beneath a hazy veil. The here and now are erased, the signs of urban frenzy – abundantly illustrated in contemporary photography – are eluded, potentially treated as asides. An infinite head of hair confronts audaciously the curves of a modern architecture: Teresa Eng treads softly, turning her back on the injunctions of a modern China. Which, out of a rock standing in its ceramic pot, or a concrete pillar erected in the water, merits our attention? Teresa Eng’s China seems to navigate between the riverbanks of a capitalist progressionism (China Dream, the title of the series, is also a popular slogan for president Xi Jiping, which in turn refers to the American Dream) and that of an orientalist romantic nostalgia.
Pauline Hisbacq was born in 1980.
After a master's degree in philosophy, she joined the ENSP in Arles, from which she graduated in 2011. She continued the same year with a post-graduate degree at the ICP in New York.
Since then, her work has been presented at the Rencontres de la Jeune photographie Internationale de Niort (2014), at the Ecureuil Foundation for Contemporary Art in Toulouse (2019), at the Image Satellite in Nice (2018), at the friche belle de Mai in Marseille (2017), and in Paris at Jeune Création (2013), at the Photo Paris Saint Germain festival (2017), at the Bal (2019), at the Rouen Normandie Photographic Center (2021).
She published Natalya at 7 Editions (2016), Le feu at September books (2017), Amour adolescente (chants d'amour) at Rayon Vert . édition (2019), Cadavre Exquis, fanzine co-published by Le Bal Books and September Books (2021), Songs for women and birds at September books (2021).
In 2017, she was awarded the CNAP's Soutien à la photographie documentaire contemporaine grant for the project La fête et les cendres. In 2021, she received the Aide Idividuelle à la Création from the Drac Ile de France for the project Rimorso. She is also the winner of the national commission Les Regards du Grand Paris initiated by the CNAP and the Ateliers Médicis, with the project Pastorale.
She is currently a photographer at the Rodin Museum, and editor at September Books.