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
The images mainly feature personalities from the world’s nightlife, fashion and art communities. The work is an exploration of queer identity, self-invention and LGTBQI culture informed by a love of high-camp, kitsch aesthetics and art history. They aim to capture both the surface and the interior world of the subject halfway between truth and fantasy. Much as Susan Sontag elucidates in ‘Notes on Camp’, Studio Prokopiou is the lie that tells the truth.
The polish photographer Natalia Kepesz (*1983) lives and works in Berlin. After studying cultural studies and art history at the Humboldt University in Berlin, she graduated in 2021 with a degree in photography at the Ostkreuzschule Berlin. Since 2016 she has been working as a freelance photographer. She is a member of bbk Berlin, VG Bild and Women Photograph.
Natalia Kepesz got third place in the World Press Photo Contest 2021 (Portrait Series). She also won the residency prize in the Portraits Hellerau Photography Award 2021, Les Jour Prix at Les Boutographies - recontres photographiques de Montpellier 2021 and was named GUP Fresheyes Talent 2021, among others.
Her works have been exhibited at the Belfast Photo Festival, Helsinki Photo Festival, Festspielhaus Hellerau Dresden, Münzenberg Forum Berlin, Noorderlicht Photo Festival and the World Press Exhibition Foto Tour, among others.
In 2015, he began his solo career with focus in “landscape and associated behavior”. His projects evolved from painting to more conceptual processes, expanding his language to photography, video and actions in the landscape.
As center of his concerns are the humankind relationships with territory, studying aspects such as: the gradual reduction of space for wildlife, “The Naked Trace“, the overpopulation, "Genesis 1.28", the artificial character of the borders "Minimal Republics", the liquid nature of the concept of nation: "Iceberg Nations" or the dichotomy between industrial agriculture and natural agriculture: "The garden of Fukuoka".
He has presence in important collections, specially within Spain, and is beginning to exhibit abroad like the two solo shows that will take place in late 2019: one at Lianzhou Museum of Photography, China, and the other at Encontros da Imagem, Braga, Portugal, as winner of 2018 “Emergentes” award.
Main topics in her practice are: life in province, religion, connections between mythology and identity, her private relations with the world and her own country, with life and death. Her working method — continuous travels to small towns. She looks for something unique — people, communities, as well as place sand objects they produce. Elena says that provincial towns can be compared to separated islands, which are far enough from the mainland for evolution to goin a very unique way. She collects peculiarities of local cultures, since is sure they are on the edge of extinction, caused by globalization as well as just poverty.
Her project “Grandmothers on the Edge of Heaven” is a private family story, but also a reflection on the gap between generations. Which is multiplied in her case by the gap between two countries and two political systems: Soviet Union and modern Ukraine.
The DUNA group is an open collective of artists (Lenka Bakes, Ladislav Kyllar, František Svatoš) focusing on themes of the future topics such as ecology and technology. Adaptus is a speculative project in which we explore the borders of humanity and complexity of fragile relationship network between various entities.
DUNA has presented in a number of solo exhibitions, presented the first volume of the Adaptus series in 2019 as part of the 4+4 Days in Motion festival in Prague, and has continued to develop the series through the NoD exhibition in Prague and online platforms. The Duna group was included by the French publication NONFICTION 02 on Nature, among a selection of artists born after 1980 setting the trends of the future, with recent works presented by Duna in the exhibition HOLY MATTER at Below Grand in NYC and in the exhibition Baitball at Polignano a Mare Italy.
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Stefania Orfanidou was born in 1989. She is a photographer and an architect currently living and working in Athens, Greece. She has lived in Kavala, Thessaloniki, Madrid, Rotterdam, L’Aquila and Chania. In January 2019 she founded the architectural atelier CHORA. In her work, a personal experience or event, real or imaginary, is the starting point for fragments’ stitching and the composition of tales, where the irrational, the reasonable, the uncanny and the secret may coexist harmoniously. Her photographic work has been featured in magazines, galleries and festivals in Greece and abroad. In February 2019 she published the book ‘Pendulum’, a visual recounting of a return journey to the city of L’Aquila in central Italy. In 2020 she received the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS. In 2021 she published the book ‘Cold Turkey’ and she created the art installation ‘Daidala’ at Yali Tzamisi at Chania, Crete.
M.D.C. always starts a conversation about Reference Guide with the last photo in the book, and this time is no exception. He took the photograph in question in the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, the Netherlands.
He enjoys telling the story of the Würzburger Lügensteine, a collection of 18th-century fake fossils — known in English as Beringer’s Lying Stones — of which some can be found at the abovementioned museum. In 2017, H.V., who was in charge of managing the science collection, gave M.D.C. and L.K. a guided tour of the museum and told them of all kinds of curiosities to be found there, including the famous Lügensteine. In the early 18th century, two palaeontologists were keen to play a trick on an arrogant colleague, a certain Johann Beringer. They buried a large part of around 2,000 fake fossils — featuring suns, stars, snails, shells and even Hebrew inscriptions — and sent a beautiful young woman, who pretended to be a doctorate student, to visit Beringer with the rest of the stones. He fell into the trap and went in search of the fossils. He found them, believed the hand of God to be the only explanation for these — what were referred to back then as — ”figure stones”, and wrote a scientific article about them.
Things ended badly for everyone. Beringer realised too late that he had been tricked. He took his colleagues to court and won the case; however, his own name will always be associated with the Lügensteine. M.D.C. grins as he tells the story but is no longer sure whether the young lady’s role in it is true.
We read about the entries in Reference Guide at the back of the publication: “The collection demonstrates a surprisingly high interest in characters and phenomena along the sidelines of these episodes and displays a severe tendency to digress”. A few days later, L.K. calls H.V. just to check the story of the Würzburger Lügensteine. It was most likely two small boys who first brought the stones to Johann Beringer.
- Text by Lars Kwakkenbos (.TIFF)
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
They are a member of D.U.O. artist group.
In their work, Pavle explores and tries to reexamine the various forms of existence and action today. Analyzes the relationship between individuals and ideologies and how they can destabilize each other. The last few years with a focus on contemporary technologies, how they disrupt and shape our life experiences and vice versa.
Sensitive to the cracks that our society is going through, her work focus on social issues and human bodies as territories. Celine uses film codes to transgress the world she’s looking at.
Her various works as a photographer and video artist were presented at the Billboard Festival in Casablanca (2015), the Marrakech Biennale in 2016, the Paraguay Biennale (El ojo Salvaje - 2018), the Tangier Photography Foundation (2019), the Dummy Award Photobook of Kassel and the Fuam Dummy Book Award from Istanbul in 2018.
In 2019, she is the winner of the In Cadaqués Festival with « SQEVNV », and the Revelation Price between Festival Map and Face à la mer.
In 2020, she is selected among 100 emerging European photographers by Gup magazine and Fresh Eyes Photo Talent 2020 (book published in July 2020) and she’s the winner of the Prix Mentor 2020 with « Mala Madre ».
In 2021, she’s one of the finalist of the HSBC prize 2021 with « SQEVNV » and will exhibited it in April at the Festival Instantes in Portugal.
Her work 'Nothing Hapenned' will be exposed in April 2021 at the Rencontres de la jeune photographie internationale de Niort (Villa Perochon). She’s also have been selected by Claudio Composti for the Leica Oscar Barnack, and she’s one of the laureate of the Tremplin Jeunes Talents of the Festival Planches Contact in Deauville 2021.
Kata Geibl (1989, Budapest) is a photographer living and working in The Hague. Her work is mainly focused on global issues, capitalism, the Anthropocene, and the ambiguities of the photographic medium.
She is currently working on her new series titled There is Nothing New Under the Sun. The series deals with the rampant individualism that underpins our contemporary social, political, and economic system, and in particular, the environmental impact that it has. By juxtaposing the melting glaciers of Dachstein, animals under human control, almost Greek god-like athletes a narrative of our new age unfolds through the images.
Her previous work entitled Sisyphus received international attention, was exhibited at UNSEEN Amsterdam which was followed by her first solo show in Budapest. She received the emerging talent Paris Photo Carte Blanche Award for the series and in the same year she was nominated for Palm* Photo Prize.
In 2019, she received the József Pécsi Photography Scholarship and was a talent for Futures Platform nominated by Capa Center Budapest.
In 2020 she is a Grand Prix Finalist at Fotofestiwal Lodz, won the PHmuseum Vogue Italia Prize and is shortlisted for Palm* Photo Prize.
More: www.katageibl.com
Claudiu Guraliuc (b.1977) is a fine art photographer and educator based in Cluj, Romania. His work specialises in fine art portraiture and nudes, inspired by the aesthetics of Old Master paintings from the Baroque period. Guraliuc holds a Licentiate from the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, and has achieved numerous international accolades for his work; in January 2022, he received the International Master Photographer of the Year Award. His images have been published by a range of international photography magazines, and his work is found in both private and public collections in Europe, Asia and the United States. Guraliuc is represented by Katsea Art Gallery, Baltimore, and Influx Gallery, London.
Max is a documentary and portrait photographer who focuses on stories about society, social and ecological chances. He is a founding member of DOCKS collective.
In our work, we explore the result of the interplay between previous and present generations, between the crew and the entertainment we provide for the locals in the places where we shoot. We use tools like traditional film photography, performance, and mixed media, operating at the interface between non-traditional documentary and marginalized fashion photography, in the contemporary environment.
Once a year we put people of our generation in conditions where they intensely experience the conflict between the cultural wealth we inherit from previous generations and the new international, material, spiritual values that impact us in the modern world. Reconciling and integrating this conflict allows us to move on culturally and spiritually and to reveal hidden aspects of life in Ukraine.