Josh Kern (*1993), currently based in Leipzig, Germany, graduated with a bachelor's degree in photography at the FH Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts in 2022. Between 2018 and 2021, Josh Kern has published three books: "Räuber" (Eigensinn Publishing), "Love Me" (Eigensinn Publishing), and "Fuck me" (dienacht Publishing).
To make a photograph, you need a specific apparatus. The most obvious would be a camera. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to consider the camera as a mere tool that works strictly according to the intentions and desires of the photographer. Nobody, not even the operator, knows exactly what is going on inside the box after the button has been pressed. This question seems to haunt the work of Calixte Poncelet. Instead of aiming his camera at the world, he scrutinizes the photographic recording device itself. In Useless Gesture, GX680, a series of 90 images, he slowly moves around a camera, capturing it from all sides as though it were a treacherous thing that needs to be closely observed. Offscreen Interaction, GX680, is a photograph of one camera observing another one: the watcher being watched. But a third camera is also present, the one that took the picture we’re looking at now, acting as the silent observer of the two other cameras. Throughout these and other works, the camera appears as a wild, ferocious animal, as the prowling predatory system that Vilèm Flusser conjures up in his book Towards a Philosophy of Photography. Mimicry, a 9-minute-long video, reinforces this idea of the camera as hunter. As we stand in front of it, we look straight through the lens into its entrails. Now and then, the shutter is released, creating a bright red circle of light. The camera is transformed into an eerie Hal 9000 (2001: A Space Odyssey) lookalike. Like that computer gone rogue, the camera tells us that we humans have no business here.
Text by Eveline Vanfraussen
Born, raised and live in Kozani, Greece. Studied IT and Computer Engineer at Patras University and he is married with three children. A self-taught photographer whose work deals with documentary and fine-art photography. Street photography is present and obvious in many aspects as well. Attended photography seminars by Jacob Aue Sobol, Platon Rivellis and Paris Petridis.
Exhibitions:2022 Where The River Runs Mute, Photometria Festival, Ioannina/GR 2021 One World, 1st International Photo Festival, Drama/GR 2021 TOLERANCE(S), Lens-based media exhibition in the framework of Art + Culture vs Xenophobia Project, curated by Eleni Mouzakiti, Kostas Ioannidis, Athens-Norway 2016 HOME, Delmar Gallery curated by Aue Sobol and Sun Hee Engelstoft during Head On Festival, Sydney/Australia 2016 Cultural Landscapes, Group Expo, Athens/GR 2015 Family, Group exhibition at Benaki Museum, Athens/GR 2014 On-Off, Personal exhibition (home printing and framing), Kozani-Kastoria/GR
Awards and shortlists2022 Parallel Voices 2022, Photometria Festival, Ioannina/GR 2021 Urban Photo Awards Finalist (People’s category), Trieste/Italy 2017-2021 Honor Mentioned and Finalist at quite a few International Street Photo Festivals
@sakisdazanihttps://sakisdazanis.weebly.com/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/dazanis https://www.facebook.com/Sakis.Da
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.
Yu Shuk Pui Bobby (b. 1994) is a visual artist based between Hong Kong and Oslo. With a collaborative approach to her practice, her work conjures the physical, tangible and affective phenomena associated with biotechnology through combinations of video, text, installation, sculpture, and performance. She often uses speculative fiction to tackle questions of human genetic engineering, reconfiguring perceptions of gender, body and historical discourses of identity. Bobby holds a BA from Hong Kong Baptist University and an MFA from Oslo National Academy of Fine Art. Her works have been in Hong Kong, Norway, Japan, China, Iceland and the USA.
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
Hajdu Tamás (b. 1976) was born in Transylvania. Today, he works as both a veterinarian and a photographer in Baia Mare, Romania. His work has been recognised by a series of prizes, including the 2013 Sony World Photography Awards, and the 2015 LensCulture Exposure Awards. Tamás’ photographs have been exhibited in multiple exhibitions including the Spotlight Romania Show at GEMAK in The Hague, the Netherlands. His work has featured in a number of international publications, including Punctum, Practical Photography, Vice, Lenscratch, Feature Shoot, The Independent, La Repubblica, National Geographic and The Guardian.
Her work is centred around reworkings of historical tropes relating to the black female body, taking from contexts that include art historical paintings and sculptures as well as 19th century colonial photography. She works to subvert established notions about black female sexuality and the standard of beauty ascribed to black females. By placing historical imagery in a contemporary context, the relationship between the treatment of the black female body in the past and its treatment in the present day is explored. Since graduating from Edinburgh College of Art with a BA (Hons) in Photography, she has been a recipient of the SSA New Graduate Award and the Degree Show Purchase Prize, resulting in her work becoming part of The University of Edinburgh Art Collection.
Barbara Debeuckelaere (BE) is a visual artist and photographer. She is a master in Visual Arts, Photography (KASK Ghent, 2021), a master in International Politics and European Law (VUBrussel, 1992) and a master in Economy (KULeuven, 1991). She started her career in Dutch Guyana (Suriname) as a junior professor at the University of Paramaribo. After that she worked as a journalist, for newspapers De Standaard and De Morgen and from 2002 on she was recruited by the VRT-newsroom. First she worked for radio (Voor de Dag, Radionieuws) and from 2007 on for television (Terzake). For VRT she made reports and traveled regularly to countries like Iran and to the Middle- East. In 2014 she quit the VRT and decided to turn away from the news industry to focus on a more poetically driven perspective on the world, through visual art and photography. In her work she is searching to explore power relations, systemic thinking, capitalism and climate change, trying to avoid the general craving for the exotic. Her life partner is Koen with whom she has 3 children: Ambroos, Jeanne and Cecile.
Paulina Tamara is a Chilean-Norwegian artist based in Bergen. With an MFA in Photography from the University for the Creative Arts, London, her works address questions of gender creativity, (queer) culture, and the act of performing for the camera. Tamara’s interests lie in the space between femininity and masculinity; her ongoing archival project, The Others, portrays Norway’s queer community, whilst her Undress series offers an investigation into the female gaze – made collaboratively with a series of queer cis-woman. In recent years, her works have been exhibited at the likes of Copenhagen Photo Festival and Norway’s National Museum of Photography.
Zsuzsi Simon (b. 1988) is a photographer and videographer living and working in Budapest. In 2015, she graduated from the Intermedia Department of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. Her research interests cover questions of feminism, body image and activism. The ways in which women think about the world is also central; she is particularly interested in the image of the female body and the expectations that come with it. Through close collaboration with groups of women – and a trademark blend of humour, provocation, irony and honesty – Simon aspires to break down various taboos. More recently her work has explored masculinity, and the role of the male muse from a female perspective. Simon is a member of Secondary Archive, which brings together women artists from Central and Eastern Europe for greater visibility.
Website: linktr.ee/zsuzsannasimon
Instagram: zsuzsi___simon
His work explores aspects of religious belief, mysticism and phenomenology and aims to understand how photography can be used to communicate such themes. Michael’s latest body of work, Noema (2020), follows the search for the Virgin Mary’s presence in two locations in which she has reportedly been seen.
With a mindful approach she seeks stillness and hidden messages in ordinary life, often exploring society, human-made landscape and nature.
Kinga Wrona (b. 1983) is a Polish documentary photographer currently living in Krakow. She is a student at the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava, Czech Republic. In her latest projects, Wrona explores the relationship between humans and nature in relation to climate change, natural disasters and environmental degradation. Her images have been published by FOTO Magazine, The Calvert Journal, National Geographic and New York Post, whilst her projects have been exhibited internationally. Her recent 85 project will soon be exhibited at Circulation(s) Festival in Paris, France.