Anaïs Boileau was born in 1992 in Nîmes. She is a photographic artist who works exploring Mediterranean cultures as a constant source of inspiration in her projects. She graduated from the art school of Lausanne, ECAL. She lives in the south of France where she alternates between photographic commissions and her artistic projects.Her work is presented in various group exhibitions and selected in several international festivals. In September 2017, she joins a year of master at Central Saint Martins school in London in photography. Since her first collaboration for M le magazine du Monde in 2015, she has worked regularly for the French and international press. Her work can be found in magazines and newspapers such as Le Monde, M le magazine du Monde, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Time or Vanity Fair.
Lesia Vasylchenko (b. 1990 Ukraine, based in Oslo, Norway) is an artist and curator. Her work with installations, moving images and photography raises questions around temporality, history and memorialising. Vasylchenko is a co-curator of the artist-run gallery space Podium and a founder of STRUKTURA. Time, a cross-disciplinary initiative for research and practice within the framework of visual arts, media archaeology, literature, and philosophy. She holds a degree in Journalism from the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and Fine Arts from Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Her works have been shown among others at Louvre Museum, Paris; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Haugar Art Museum, Tønsberg; Tenthaus Gallery, Oslo; The Wrong New Digital Art Biennale.
Eva Maria Bouillon (b. 1997) currently lives and works in Bruges, Belgium. In 2019, she received a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts and Photography from the LUCA School of Arts, followed by a Master’s degree in 2020. Her work probes at the relationship between storytelling, family history and personal experience. In recent years, her work has featured in several group exhibitions and international film festivals.
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
Petra Slobodnjak is an artist from Croatia who graduated from the Faculty of Graphic Arts, studying graphic product design, in Zagreb in 2012. Since 2014, Petra has been working as a freelance graphic designer and photographer. She is a Croatian Freelance Artist Association member and has exhibited her work regularly since 2008. For work DISPLACEMENT Planinska 7, she received the Ivan Kožarić award for the best young artist, awarded by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb and the City of Zagreb (in 2022) and award for the Best Young Artist in 2022 awarded by the Croatian Association of Artists of Applied Arts. The mentioned work is part of the Museum of Contemporary Art collection in Zagreb. Her artistic work intertwined with her personal life, examining the boundaries between these two aspects. She explores the dynamics of society in her works, emphasizing personal responsibility in shaping the environment. Through artistic expression, she fosters awareness of an individual’s impact on broader societal changes, encouraging reflection on one’s actions and relationship to the surroundings. She is currently based in Zagreb.
Studied Art History and Film Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. In 2013 graduated from the Academy of Photography in Warsaw. From 2013 to June 2014 participated in the Mentorship Programme by Sputnik Photos. From 2015 to 2019 student of photography at the Institut of Creative Photography in Opava, Czech Republic. Participant of the 2nd cycle of PARALLEL - European Photo based Platform (2018-2019).
Her main projects are "Splinter", a story of people living in continuous disorder, "When Objects Are Always Similar” about visual parallels between pictures and „Firmly Pinch The Skin Together” about tension, pressure and balance in everyday life.
His work has been recognized through a variety of prestigious professional awards and achievements: In 2014 he was awarded the Grand Prize of the 32nd Hungarian Press Photo Competition for a photo series about the civil war in Syria. In 2015 he covered the conflict in eastern Ukraine and the impact of the refugee crisis across Europe. In the same year he was selected to participate in the Joop Swart Masterclass organized by the World Press Photo Organization. In 2017 he took part in the workshop of Magnum Photos as a recipient of the Robert Capa Centre’s scholarship. In 2018 he was the recipient of the Károly Hemző prize, one of the leading Hungarian photography awards, in recognition of his photo series which drew on a sophisticated form language to capture social phenomena in a way that reflects the photographer’s deep social sensitivity. In the same year, he was also selected to join the Nikon-NOOR Academy Masterclass.
He was awarded the Pécsi József Photography Grant in 2015, 2018 and 2019 for his project entitled The Last Storytellers. In his work thus far, he has tended to focus on the presentation of contemporary societal problems and conflicts, as well as their ramifications. But presenting the victims of long-gone repressive regimes, his The Last Storytellers diverges from this focus. Pursuing a similar theme, his The Darkest Hour series shows that in the same way that the wounds carried by the survivors of labor camps continue to mark the victims to this very day, the underlying experiences have also left an enduring imprint on the physical landscape and the collective memory of humanity.
His work has been recognized by several public and private institutions, such as the Salomon R. Guggenheim (USA) or the Sasakawa Foundation (Japan-Scandinavia). He has exhibited in numerous countries like: Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Germany, UK, Slovakia, Norway, Russia or Singapore.
His practice is focused on new approaches to the idea of contemporaryy landscape, he has develop different bodies of work such us Metropolis (2018-2019), De Magnete (2016-2018), Environments (2014-2016), Velocidad de las Ventanas (2015) or Almost Black (2011-2015).
Gorospe combines his work as an artist with the study and understanding of the image from a theoretical point of view.
He collaborates in different projects as a curator and photo-editor.
The focus of my work in the past years has been human violence and poverty: how its constant reception can restructure the society and the self. I live and work in Mexico with the aim of completing my visual research on this topic, where I look for cultural movements, group activities, individual destinies which exist as consequence of the persistent violence and repress. My goal is to be engaged from an intimate closeness in order to witness, capture the essence of these realities, emotionally, mentally strongly involve the viewer into the topics I'm working with, to give the audience another perspective on the reasons why their lifestyle may often appear to be controversial and condemned, where I believe the key always lies in a brutal social and political system. I aim to give voice and visibility for people who are social outcasts, victims of injustice, showing contemporary social conflicts in a different context and narrative other than the newspapers. The photograph's focal point is a physical remnant of violence – a scar, a bruise, or a symbolic conduit, landscape – while the non-physical remnants of aggression are left to the viewer to interpret through a gaze, expression or pose and in physical space accompanied with text, interviews, even sound, so the story can become a whole, questioning faith, the nature of human and it's behavior.
More: http://koladel.org/
Wathne studied Visual Arts at the Trondheim Academy of Fine Art and Photography at the Norwegian School of Photography.
Luna Scales (b. 1992) graduated as a visual artist from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2020. Several of Scales’ works have been exhibited in a number of group exhibitions both nationally and internationally, and in 2019 she had a solo exhibition at Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm, Sweden.
Her artistic practice reflects a consistent interest in and references to the iconography of western art history, which comes to expression through photographs and videos of the female body in particular, patterns of movement and directions of the gaze. Scales often portrays herself, playing in her works with the public’s ideas of physical functional abilities. In so doing she questions these very notions, and in this connection also simultaneously presents a critique of the gaze at and notions about the body.
She lives and works in Copenhagen.
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.
Verena has a deep interest in personal histories and narrative storytelling. Intrigued by the way cultural and political factors influence one’s life, she uses her lens-based practice to shed light on inner life and everyday “reality” in intimate settings. The encounter with the subject is the core of and the fuel for her work. To a large extent, Blok’s photography and video work is driven by the complex, paradoxical, tragic, and sometimes humorous set of social and cultural relations that form everyday life in Poland. As a Dutch-Polish dual citizen raised in The Netherlands and The United States, Blok has a keen awareness of her position moving between East and West. By coming close to her subjects and embedding herself for stretches of time, she uses these locations as her studio, a backdrop to the narratives that both artist and subject become part of.
In 2015, she received her Bachelor's degree from the Department of Photography-Videography at the Art and Design College, West University of Timisoara and, in 2017, her Master's degree in Publicity Graphics. In December 2015, she had her first personal photography exhibition in Timisoara, followed in the next few years by several personal and group exhibitions. In 2016, Oana was selected for the Professional shortlist in the Staged category of the Sony World Photography Awards.
Karim El Maktafi (Desenzano del Garda, 1992) is an Italian Moroccan photographer based in Milan. In 2013 he graduated at the Instituto Italiano di Fotografia in Milan. In 2016, he obtained a one-year scholarship at Fabrica, Benetton's communication research center in Treviso.
During his residency period, El Maktafi made the project Hayati and, one year later, won the PHMuseum 2017 Grant - New Generation Prize. With the same project, El Maktafi has been finalist of the CAP Prize 2017 (Contemporary African Photography prize) and second prize at the Kassel Dummy Award 2018. In 2017 he won a mentorship with the American photographer Maggie Steber (VII Agency), while in 2018 he gets the Magnum Photos scholarship with Alex Majoli.
Karim works on long-term projects between Italy and Morocco exploring concepts as identity and sense of belonging through documentary and portrait photography. His work has been exhibited at La Triennale Museum in Milan, Museum in Der Kulturbrauerei in Berlin, Pavillon Populaire in Montpellier, Macro Testaccio Museum in Rome and in other photography festivals in Europe, as well has been published, among others, on The Washington Post Magazine, National Geographic USA, Internazionale, Vice, GEO.
www.karimelmaktafi.com
Scarlat’s work has been recognised and awarded in several national and international competitions, such as PHotoEspaña, the Emerging Photographer Fund (Magnum Foundation), World Nomads, Promoción del Arte at Tabacalera Cantera, Visa pour l’image, Matera European Photography, Artistas Novos, and Creación Injuve. In 2021 he received a bookmaking scholarship at Magnum Photos. This year he also has received a long-term mentorship scholarship at Magnum Photos, and he is currently working with Gregory Halpern and Alessandra Sanguinetti for this project.
Scarlat has always been interested in working with his family from Romania. After leaving in 2005 at the age of 11 and having spent 15 years away, his relationship with them has changed. In his projects, he like to insist on those tensions and conflicts that have arisen as a result of moving to Spain. He is interested in Eastern Europe, Romania, alcoholics, his mother, religion, death, the traces of communism on people's faces, gypsies, children, the cemetery, the lake, wedding dresses, unmarried women, dead girls in wedding dresses, dead horses, boys playing soccer, abandoned dogs, funerals, weddings, enchantments, women who are going to clean the graves in the cemetery, flowers, gold…