The network

Sophie Gladstone is a photographer based in London.

After finishing her undergraduate studies in 2018, Sophie Gladstone has continued her art practise while working in editorial positions. Her work has been exhibited in both Europe and Asia and was recently shortlisted for the Emergentes International Photography Award and nominated for the Foam Paul Huf Award. Currently, Gladstone works as Assistant Photography Editor at Wallpaper*, a luxury design-focused publication. This role feeds back into her photography, informing a critical perspective as she works across the reality and fantasy of contemporary visual culture. Aesthetics of advertising, social media and e-commerce are also inspiration points. Through her practice, she performs the capitalist pressures that undermine positive traits within us, such as the desire to improve ourselves and connect with others.

Balázs Máté is a Budapest-based photographer. Alongside his commission works he runs his personal projects as a continual inquiry and experimentation about visual perception and experience. He sees the medium of photography as a possible means of extended sense.

His work has been shown in various galleries and festivals including The Saatchi Gallery, Ludwig Museum Budapest, Dubai Design Days, Vienna Photobook Fair, Backlight Photo Festival and Budapest Art Market. His work has been published in magazines including Wallpaper Magazine, IGNANT, Self Publish Be Happy, Thisispaper, Waterfall Magazine, The Room Magazine and Der Grief.

David Bakarić Mihaljević, born in 2001. In Zagreb, is an undergraduate student of cinematography at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb. With ambitions of completing a master's degree in photography at the academy, David has had three solo exhibitions and participated in five group exhibitions. One of these, named "So Far," he organized himself with the help of his colleagues and friends. Besides photography, and prior to attending the Academy, David filmed two experimental documentaries. His film, "From You I Am Happy," was shown in the non-competition program at the Zg Dox festival.

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Łukasz Rusznica (b. 1980) is a photographer, curator, and educator based in Wrocław, Poland. Since graduating in cultural studies from the University of Wrocław, he has exhibited his works in galleries and museums in Poland and abroad.

He is the author of the photobooks Smog, Near, Infra, Toskana, European Eyes on Japan Vol. 18, and The Most Important Things I Do Not Tell You At All, designed by Thomas Schostock. His works have been published in SZUM, BIURO, LaVie, Machina, POST, and Bad to the Bone. He is a winner of the Show OFF Section of the Krakow Photomonth Festival 2012 and the WARTO 2015 Award.

In 2016 he was selected to take part in European Eyes on Japan—a unique project inviting photographers from European Capitals of Culture to capture everyday life in Japan. He is the winner of Griffin Art Space Prize—Lubicz 2017 for the best portfolio at Krakow Photomonth 2017. Rusznica currently runs a photography gallery, Miejsce przy Miejscu, dedicated to promoting emerging photographers from Poland and abroad.

Wiktoria Synak (b. 1994, Gdynia, Poland) studied at Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, ESADMM in Marseille and ArBA-EsA in Brussels. She is currently based in Brussels, Belgium.

It’s been seven years since I left Poland, my native country. The departure created the need to question my homeland. It swings constantly back in my mind and in my works. What I try to understand is why Poland resonates in me. Why do I constantly look for it abroad whereas all I wanted was to escape from it? Finally, how can I free myself from it? Answers never come; only more questions appear. Somewhere between past and present stories, speculations; an opportunity for me to wander through different identities.

My practice mixes photography, physical presence, text, installation and sound. Our My work in progress, Dom* [EN house, home], lies between performance and theatre play, not suiting plainly to either of them. It engages two performers and me, a setting that is being constructed during the show and numerous stories that come along with it. What I explore is the visual mean in which a story, a memory, or an image is transmitted throughout a performative act.

* Dom is written by Wiktoria Synak, directed by Wiktoria Synak and Erwan Augoyard and performed by Wiktoria Synak, Anouk Boyer-Mazal and Olga Wyszkowska.

Anna Aicher (b. 1993) is a documentary and portrait photographer from Germany. After studying photography in Berlin, she became a team member at Salzburg’s Gallery Fotohof in 2018. She is currently following a Masterclass at Ostkreuzschule, Berlin. Exploring traces of old traditions and rituals in contemporary society, most of Aicher’s projects have an auto-biographical dimension. She travels constantly between the city and the countryside, turning up stories nestled in distinct communities. Besides her personal projects, Aicher regularly works on assignments for various newspapers and magazines.

Website: www.anna-aicher.com 

Marens van Leunen (1994) is a Dutch visual artist, currently based in Antwerp. Her work explores different layers within the everyday. She is interested in objects and spaces and their quality to carry meaning and memories. The relationship between individuals and their home environment and the objects within this space is often a starting point of her work. She creates images with multiple layers by both observing and staging, using personal memories and her imagination.

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Marina Istomina (b. 1993, Ust-Kut, Irkutsk Oblast) is a visual artist working with studies of memory, trauma and particularly with traumatic experience. Her practice is often based on interviews and archives, embodied through visual images. In her projects she suggests her own narrative, combining different types of images – self portraits, archival images, staged and documentary photography, still lives.

In 2015 she graduated in Cultural Studies from the Higher School of Economics (Moscow) and in 2019 she completed the course Experiences of Contemporary Photography at Docdocdoc School of Contemporary Photography (St. Petersburg). Exhibitions include: In the N apartment, all tricks are taken seriously, ZGA Gallery, St. Petersburg (2019); MoS Photo Prize, Art of Omsk City Museum (2019); Young Artists That Oksana Budulak and Sanya Zakirov Liked This Winter, Ploshchad Mira Museum Center, Krasnoyarsk (2020); and Young Photographers of Russia 2020, Innovative Cultural Center, Kaluga; Exhibition Hall, Tula (2020), Assuming the Distance: Speculations, Fakes and Predictions in the Age of the Coronacene (Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow). She is a winner of The Calvert Journal Makers of Siberia Special Jury Prize (2019), the New East Photo Prize (2020), and the competition Krakow Show OFF at Photography Month in Krakow (2021). She lives and works in Moscow.

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Born in Rome in 1990, he studied photography and darkroom printing techniques and since 2011 he began his research on photographic materials and the relationship between visual languages and printing processes. In 2012 wins the Pesaresi Prize with the project "The Arab Revolt", which is selected in "The Photobook. A History Vol. III" by M.Parr and G. Badger and later acquired by the MET of New York. In 2017 he published "The Iceberg which received a special mention for the Author Book Award at Rencontres d'Arles 2018 and is among the finalists for the Prix Bob Calle du livre d'artiste. He lives and works in Rome where he teaches Photography and Printing Techniques.

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Róbert Nunkovics (1993) examines the relational systems of urban life, exploring naive artistic attempts appearing in public spaces, graffiti, and the acts of their reception through the medium of photography and video. In his own images, he presents urban space as various, freely usable surfaces for artistic creation. He sensitively combines research-based mediums - objects, memories, drawings, or collective photography - with works coming from his own observations, delicately examining the issues of our environment and social groups.

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Catalin Anghel (b. 1984) is an artist based in Timisoara, Romania, who works in the fields of photography and mixed media art. He obtained his Photography degree in Dublin at Institute of Photography in 2011. He moved back to Romania in 2014 and in the same year he organized his first event ‘Fotocultura – Timisoara European Cultural Capital’ | photography contest and exhibition. In 2017, he started 'Wedtrotter' - a documentary series which follows the best wedding photographers in the world. His latest project is 'Imagine Timisoara Festival' (2019) – an event who got together over 200 photographers in 2 days of conference, workshops, photography contests and exhibitions.

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".