The network

Tamara Eckhardt, born in 1995, lives and works as a portrait and documentary photographer in Berlin. From 2017-2021 she studied at the Ostkreuzschule for Photography in Berlin. Since 2022 she is a member of the renowned German Agency OSTKREUZ. Her photographic works mainly deal with marginalized social groups and minorities – with a particular focus on documenting adolescence. Her analog photography strives to shed a kind light on her protagonists whom she follows up on for months at a time for each project. Eckhardts expressive portraits give the viewer an intimate insight into the lives of youth in Germany and Ireland. With her work Eckhardt has been awarded and shortlisted for numerous awards such as the Kolga Tbilisi Award,International Woman Photo Award, Gute Aussichten 21/22 Award, BFF Förderpreis, Kuala Lumpur International Photo Award, and the German Youth Photo Award.

info@tamareckhardt.de
‍ www.tamaraeckhardt.com

Yao Yuan (b. 1988) is a non-binary artist born in Sichuan, China. Their practice navigates between photography, design and moving image. Using documentation and staging, their photographic work expresses an intrinsic curiosity for intersectionality and spirituality. Their investigations explore the power of storytelling and dramaturgy, to rethink the binary framework of dominant norms, particularly those that relate to gender and sexuality. In recent years, the focus of Yuan’s work has touched upon topics of non-normative narratives surrounding motherhood, queer intimacy and representation.

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Yulia Krivich is a visual artist, curator in Za*Grupa and activist, born in Ukraine, currently based in Warsaw. In her work, she explores issues related to identity, combining elements of activism with personal histories. Her interests include topics related to Eastern Europe and migration. Yulia works with photography and public space.

Graduated from the Department of Architecture of the State Academy of Civil Engineering and Architecture (2010) in Dnipro (Ukraine) and from the Faculty of Media Arts of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (Poland). She was a participant of the Pla(t)form at the Fotomuseum in Winterthur, Switzerland (2018) and nominated for the Pinchuk Art Center Prize for Young Artists in Ukraine (2018) with her “Daring & Youth project”, recipient of the Solidarity Grant of Krytyka Polityczna (2020) as part of curatorial trio ZA*grupa and is one of the recipients of the Scholarship Program of Warsaw City in 2021.

Katya Bogachevskaia (*1986) is a visual artist, curator, editor, and lecturer from StPetersburg, Russia, now based in Lisbon, Portugal.

Having worked as a photo editor, curator, and lecturer for many years, Katya picked up acamera after moving from Russia to Portugal. Photography has become a tool forBogachevskaia to express her feelings about forced emigration and the war unleashed byher native country, Russia, in Ukraine. Through her work, she reflects on the intense impactof this devastating war, searches for her own identity, copes with the loss of her home,experiences fear for her children, and navigates the process of integrating into a newenvironment.

Observing her children and the world around her - primarily nature, Katya createsmetaphorical images infused with subtle, hidden meanings.

Katya is the founder of the Academy of Documentary and Art Photography Fotografika, ofthe independent photobook publishing house Fotografika Publishing, and editor ofPhotojournal of Republic Media.

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Ieva Raudsepa (b. 1992, Latvia) holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of Latvia and a MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. Her work has been featured in i-D, The Guardian, Wallpaper, It’s Nice That, the Latvian Photography Yearbook, and elsewhere. Her series Cruise was part of the exhibition MIXTAPE at the Riga Photomonth 2016, while the book dummy was shortlisted for the Unseen Dummy Award 2016, Amsterdam, and is now released by Milda Books. In Spring 2018 her work was part of Post-Soviet Visions: image and identity in the new Eastern Europe at the Calvert 22 Foundation, London. Her exhibition It Could Just Swallow You Up at the ISSP Gallery in Riga opened July 2019.

Joel Karppanen (b. 1993) is a visual artist, photographer, filmmaker, writer, critic and the artistic director of Oulu Music Video Festival. Known for long-term documentary photography series, experimental films and personal essays exploring themes of labor and class, his work has often been described as “historically-aware", "honest" and "sensitive". 

Karppanen has received recognition including New Photo Journalist Award and Jouko Lehtola Foundation’s Young Hero Grant in 2017. His first monograph 'Finnish Pastoral' was published in 2018; the same year he participated in We Feed The World, a global photographic exhibition in London, featuring names such as Martin Parr, Susanna Meiselas and Graciela Iturbide.

In 2019 Karppanen had his first museum solo show in the Aine Art Museum. Furthermore his works have been exhibited in Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, KunstHausWien and Mänttä Art Festival among others. His latest exhibition in Gallery Halmetoja in August 2023 received critical acclaim. Karppanen's works can be found in various collections including The Finnish State Art Commission, The Finnish Museum of Photography and Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation.Originally from Northern Finland, Karppanen now lives and works in Helsinki, Finland.

Kerry was born and raised in Staffordshire. She moved to London, where she still lives, to study at London College of Printing, which is now part of University of the Arts London.

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. 

Arne Piepke (1991) is a documentary photographer who grew up in a small village in Germany.

He deals with social issues and the people‘s connection to history and their surroundings. With his photo-essays he wants to raise questions that follow the viewer and contribute to an examination of the topics and thus to a better mutual understanding.

He was awarded for PDN Student Contest, World Report Award, PDN Emerging Photographer and was nominated for the W. Eugene Smith Student Grant. In 2019 he was selected for the screenings at Visa Pour l’Image. His work was featured in Neue Zürcher Zeitung, FAZ Woche, Tortoise Media and others.

He is a founding member of DOCKS, a collective of five documentary photographers who act upon shared humanistic values.

Angelina Vernetti (* 1993 in Lüneburg, DE) lives and works as a freelance photographer in Berlin. Her focus is on portraiture, fashion and art. She works e.g. in editorial for magazines like Der SPIEGEL and GEO Magazine, photographs commissioned art for architectural firms or teaches fashion photography at the Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle. For documentary long term projects Angelina researches and photographs socially relevant but underrepresented topics.

For example, her works tell of the socio-cultural effects of the birth control pill (SMILE EFFEKT, 2020) and of beauty ideals and their consequences (EVERY BODY, 2022). In 2020 she graduated with a bachelor's degree in documentary photography at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Hannover.

Bogdan Shirokov is a photographer based in Moscow. The main topic of his visual research is contemporary masculinity and the way it manifests in Russian society, especially among the youth generation.

He is committed to capturing the inner world of his subjects as well as creating a recognisable visual language to reflect softness, power and vulnerability. Bodgan's work has been featured in international publications  such as 032c, I-D, Highsnobiety and Vogue and exhibited in numerous galleries in Moscow.

He is a Colombian-Spanish artist and writer. He has participated in different festivals and exhibitions, both individual and collective, in Spain, México and Colombia.

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.

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Maria Guțu was born in 1996 in Moldova, Republic of. In 2022 she finished her studies at Docdocdoc School of Modern Photography, Saint Petersburg. In 2020 she finished her studies at, Academy of Music, Theatre, and Fine Arts in Chisinau she studied cinematography for 4 years. In 2018 she became one of 30 women photographers under 30 years by Artpil. In 2019 she received a CDFD(Centre of Documentary Photography) grant, Bucharest, Romania. In 2020 she became a finalist of 2020 People Photography Award by The Independent Photographer.  From 2021 Maria is a member of WomenPhotograph.

In 2022 she was shortlisted at Sony World Photography Awards, Open Competition: Portraiture. In 2023 she was shortlisted at Sony  National & Regional Awards. She had collective exhibitions in: Romania, France and The United States. Maria is interested in documentary photography, remote places, youth, notion of home and the relation between humans and environment. 

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András Ladocsi’s (b. 1992) desire for seeking and finding the truth comes from the subject he observes. His works reassure and delight the viewer while they are also equally capable of making them uncomfortable.

In his photos, naturalism and realism are greatly anesthetized and organized into tight compositions. The works vibrate between an intimate and a more distanced approach. The artist’s intent to systematize and to create is unavoidably present in the pictures, but his neutral use of space and backgrounds being completely free from identity, provide adequate territory for the observer’s personal interpretation. His art also exhibits noticeable cohesion. This does not sprout from a labored stylistic mannerism but instead from the explicit and successful display of a distinct vision.

András Ladocsi was also nominated for Futures by Hyères Festival.

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.

Verdiana Albano (*1993) is an Afro-European artist based in Frankfurt and Hamburg. Throughout her studies at the University of Arts and Design Offenbach until 2021, she specialized in photography and installation art. Supported by the DAAD, she studied and lived in Chongqing, China, in 2019, where she created the series "surrounded," which is now part of the Art Collection Deutsche Börse. 

Her works and engagement has been marked by accolades, including the Bayern Innovativ’s Junge Kunst und Neue Wege Stipendium, and grants like the Neustart Kultur Stipend 2022 and Neustart Plus Stipend 2023 from Stiftung Kunstfonds. Albano's works have been showcased in both solo and group exhibitions nationwide and internationally. She premiered her first solo exhibition through the ISO 5000 Prize 2021 of Hans and Annemarie Weidmann Foundation. In 2023 she was part of Les Rencontres de la Photographie d'Arles at the Fondation Manuel Rivera-Ortiz.

Albano's influence extends beyond her art, as she has been an invited guest at the German-British Democracy Forum, and held talks for the Hertie Foundation and the BARCAMP of the German Foreign Office. In 2023, she started to establish an Afro-European artist network, leveraging her Allianz Foundation Fellowship to foster collaboration within the artistic community.

Jošt Dolinšek (1997, Ljubljana, SI) is a lens-based visual artist. His practice is predominantly stemming from photographic medium and is expanded into moving imagery, installation and sculpture.
Dolinšek mostly works on long-term projects, exploring the existential experience of environment and time and our relationship towards both. His work is centred upon the questions on uncertainty — of perspective, duration and change. Form and materiality pose as one of the crucial elements of his works, and are often strongly related to the process and the inquiry behind them.
In 2023, he graduated from a MFA Photography programme at HDK-Valand in Gothenburg (SE) and in 2020, he earned a BA in Psychology at the University of Ljubljana (SI). Among others, he has exhibited his works in Fotografie Forum Frankfurt (DE), Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana (SI) and Röda Sten Konsthall in Gothenburg (SE). He lives and works in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Arguiñe Escandón (Bilbao, 1979) focuses her attention on psychological and sociological aspects, as well as on exploring emotional bonds. Working on the thin line between fiction and reality, she builds in her photographs an imaginary wrapped in mysterious atmospheres. 

In 2020, her work was shortlisted for the Prix Elysée and the Galicia Contemporary Photography Award. She  also was a winner of the Fine Arts and Photography grant given by the Spanish Ministry of Culture and nominated at the Swiss Design Awards, amongst other recognitions.

She has exhibited in places such as Wilde Gallery (Geneva), Images Vevey, Verzasca Photo (Switzerland), Galería C19 (Ibiza), Galería Serendipia, Galería OTR (Madrid) and others.

Her book “Aya” published by RM (in conjunction with Yann Gross) has been recognized as one of the best books of 2020 by institutions such as PhotoEspaña or the Lucie Foundation (NY).

Prominent media like Aperture Magazine, El País, Fisheye, Gup, Le Temps, Liberation, Vogue Italia and Vistprojects have published her work.

Bulgarian artist and director George Stamenov examines the immersive possibilities of story telling by challenging the dogmas of contemporary film making. His short films carry a unique aesthetic that is derived from Eastern Europe.

Raised in Sofia, Bulgaria and trained as a painter from an early age, his work arises from an early fascination with the Renaissance and Medieval eras. Stamenov utilizes computer graphic imagery as his primary medium, often to render the uncanny side of a simple event or a movement in a composition, exaggerating its insignificance in an extraordinary manner.

George Stamenov was born in 1988 and lives and works in London, United Kingdom. He completed undergraduate studies at Willem De Kooning Academie and postgraduate studies at the Royal College of Art. His work was featured in The Bloomberg New Contemporaries for two consecutive years (2018, 2019); NOT A LIVE SHOW Bonington Gallery, Nottingham (2018); Working Projects - Inhabiting the Dome at Whiteleys Shopping Center (2018); Water Tower Festival Bulgaria (2012).

Zhou is based in Helsinki, Finland, where they completed their Master’s degree in Arts with a major in Photography and a minor in Textiles-Materials and Structures at Aalto University in 2023. Their work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Finnish Museum of Photography, Photographic Centre Peri, Photographic Gallery Hippolyte(Finland), BFoto Festival (Spain), FORMAT Photography Festival (UK), and alpha nova & galerie futura (Germany) as part of Berlin Art Week 2023.

Arno Brignon (b. 1976) lives and works in Toulouse. With a background as an educator in underprivileged neighbourhoods, he later devoted himself fully to photography, joining the Signatures agency in 2013. Brignon’s work questions the place of man in the world, exploring ideas of territory and memory through a poetic photographic approach. He divides his time between teaching, residency programmes, personal research and assignments for various media outlets. Brignon’s images are regularly exhibited both domestically and internationally, whilst his works is found in a series of private and public collections. Thus far, he has published four books Ancrages, D'après une histoire vraie, La formacion de las olas, and Terre et Territoire #1.

arno-brignon.fr

@arnobrignon