One often looks at the work of Arnaud De Wolf with a sense of disbelief. Is that image of a gigantic ice cube really floating in mid-air? Is that colourful picture of an ancient forest a realistic depiction or is it a digital fabrication, a fanciful re-creation? What are we meant to discern in his cyanotype prints: random blue lines surrounding white voids of various shapes and sizes or the contours of a mountainous landscape? By means of an unconventional presentation of the photographic image, simply turning it on its side or projecting it into a corner or using outdated techniques, such as the cyanotype, De Wolf presents us with works that hover between the clarity of description and the artificiality of invention. A projected bundle of light suddenly transforms into a three-dimensional object; abstract lines coagulate into a legible form; colours become deceitfully (un)real. In each of his experiments, De Wolf is testing the boundaries of the photographic system, looking for that breaking point where the photograph loses its readability and easy accessibility. His thorough investigation of colour is particularly revealing: Fading forest makes abundantly clear that colour in photography is always artificial. The colours that we see in a photograph are technologically and culturally coded; they are made in the chemist’s lab or produced by a programmer’s algorithm. Colour is here revealed as the manipulative garb in which the photographic skeleton is dressed.
Text by Steven Humblet
Giulia Gatti was born in Fabriano in 1995. A lifelong dancer, she moved to Rome, where she collaborated with several dance companies. In 2017 she began her research in photography, studying for a year at the New Institute of Design (NID) in Perugia, where she graduated. In 2019 she won the first prize Portfolio sul Po of the FIAF national circuit Portfolio Italia 2019. She currently continues her journey through South America — between Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Patagonia, and Mexico — dedicating herself to projects that combine dance, photography, and writing. In 2020 her project “Su mia madre tira vento” received the Marco Pesaresi Award for Contemporary Photography.
Maria João Salgado, was born in Portugal, in 1992 and has studied at the Portuguese Institute of Photography (IPF) and at Institute of Cultural and Artistic Production (IPCI) in Porto. Since 2015 she has been focusing on Documental Photography, mainly developing projects on human rights and alternative living communities. Currently, she is focusing on a more artistic approach, developing themes on personal issues.
With additional background in gender studies & activism Marta’s artistic work focuses on geopolitical and social issues, gossip & fiction, as well as personal experiences. She experiments with various media including participatory workshops and sound installations..
Marta’s work was shown e.g. at OBSCURA Festival of Photography in Malaysia, at TIFF Festival in Wroclaw, at ODESA PHOTO DAYS 2020, BLICA - First Biennale of Arts in Lebanon. Photobook presenting SHIFTERS project is shortlisted for Mack First Book Award 2020. She was selected for several residencies, most recently Landskrona Foto Residency (2020), as well as Nida Art Colony, Gasworks, and Botkyrka Konsthal. She took part in ‘Re-Tooling Residencies Project’ organised by CCA Warsaw. She created & curated ‘Fenix Cities: workshops and exhibitions in Warsaw and Beirut’.
www.martabogdanska.com
Kölcsey Sára is a commercial and documentary photographer from Hungary, Pécs. She started her career at the age of 32, after she gave birth to her fourth child. She thrives on the opportunity to capture a story by framing complex scenes. She works on several long-term projects with subjects closely related to her own life events and experiences. As an artist and mother she captures the life of women, girls, and mothers. She strongly believes that they all deserve to be seen, and also to be heard.
The nature of the female body is also in her scope of interest: both what it stirs within and on the surface; its ability to create and grow life, its cyclical reminder that death is ever-present and, by the potency of 1st prize at the 42nd Hungarian Press Photo Competition: "Every day life" series category
Lukáš Opekar focuses on photography and moving images, which he transforms into virtual environments, hand-printed graphics, and cyanotypes. He explores the limits of photography using methods of computer vision, but also through algae growth or drawing. Using random processes he discovers extraordinary worlds that hide behind the commonly perceived reality. He cultivates images from fragments, and the result that emerges from this substrate is largely a surprise. A long-term theme of his work is the exploration of the intermingling of living and non-living beings over time. He studied at Faculty of Art and Design Jan Evangelista Purkyne University in Ústí nad Labem and he lives and works in Prague.
His work often revolves around territory. In Ramo it was his ancestor’s Calabria, in Jardin the mythical space of the garden, found in the streets and parks of Madrid. In his new project, Massao is working on around the Mediterranean coasts, cradle of many civilisations, using the journey of Ulysses as a loose guideline. The scope of his work is profoundly political, as it is rooted in the need to explore how humans relate to the spaces (both cultural and geographical) they inhabit.
The work Jardin was awarded the BOZAR Nikon Monography Series Award 2016. In 2017, he was nominated and be part of the .TIFF by FOMU Antwerp.
In July 2019 his first book Jardin has been published by Witty Kiwi and L'éditeur du dimanche.
Massao'work is part of the prestigious collection of the Foundation A Stichting. He is currently a fellow of the Fondation A Stichting for a project around the Mediterranean which will be exhibited there in September 2020.
From September 2019 Massao started as teacher in the Brussels Royal Academy of Fine Arts.
His practice explores themes of isolation and identity, the juxtaposition of collective and individual, communication versus segregation. By using small narratives he wants to shed light on ways we affect and are affected by artificial social and physical environments.
He has exhibited in The Netherlands and abroad and his work was included in The New Dutch Talent catalogue of 2017 from GUP magazine, and in the Encontros da Imagem 2017 festival program, while his project Point of View was shortlisted for FotoFilmic18.
More: http://www.vassilistriantis.com
The escalating crisis in her home country of Venezuela has motivated her to produce Trevale’s ongoing recent piece “Venezuelan Youth”, which has been widely exhibited notably at her solo show at ThePrintSpace in London and at Vogue Italia’s Photo Vogue Festival this year. Through the progress in her MA, she has taken a closer look at the women of her family. As her work carries a nostalgic density towards her home and family, she returned to her childhoods memories and recent events. By collaborating with her grandmother Rosa and mother Maria, she explores the past of her great grandmother Cayetana. With the intention to celebrate her bravery as an indigenous woman and her roots. By, observing the Latin essence the women of her life grew up with.
Damien Caccia (b. 1989) studied at the École supérieure d’arts des Rocailles, and then at the École Supérieure des beaux-arts de Nantes. His creative approach is based on narration: viewers are drawn into a fictional visual world, playing their own role in its creation. Using various materials – acrylic paint on glass, concrete, plaster, bleached tarps and fabrics – Caccia works at the frontiers of abstraction, with light, shape and colour offering rhythm to his creations. A co-founder of Grande Surface, an artist-run space in Brussels, his work has been exhibited by a range of institutions in France and Belgium.
damiencaccia.com
@damien.caccia
Rūta Kalmuka is a Latvian photographer whose passion for analogue photography took root during her secondary school years under the mentorship of Andrejs Grants. For roughly seven years, she immersed herself in the art of film developing, darkroom printing, and the finer details of traditional photography. This hands-on experience laid the foundation for her enduring commitment to analogue processes. Despite the demands of a busy editorial career, Kalmuka consistently nurtured her personal art practice. She created bodies of work focused on her immediate family, capturing intimate narratives through the tactile, deliberate medium of film. Over the years, she participated in numerous group exhibitions, both in Latvia and abroad, showcasing her evolving perspective on family life and everyday rituals. In 2022, she transitioned from the news agency to a new role as a photographer in a museum setting, affording her more time and creative freedom to develop her ideas. This shift allowed Kalmuka to delve deeper into the conceptual aspects of her projects, further refining her analogue techniques. Two years later, in 2024, she exhibited a long-term family-centered project at the ISSP Gallery—an exhibition that encapsulated her ongoing exploration of memory, identity, and personal history. Through her distinct blend of traditional processes and reflective storytelling, Kalmuka continues to expand the expressive potential of analogue photography.
She is a student of the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava (the Czech Republic), winner of the PDN Emerging Photographer, last year's laureate of the Konrad Pustoła's Remembrance Scholarship, winner of the Sputnik Photos Project titled "As you can see". Her works have been published e.g. in The Calvert Journal, Culture.pl, FK magazine.
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He is interested in the image and imbrication of this medium with other disciplines such as sculpture and installation. As well as visual media, music and the creation of scenography and environments. Trying to convey an experience, an event or a state of mind is his main excuse when developing a project.
He investigates the relationship between the individual and his environment, about the spaces we inhabit and about contemporary forms of domestic life and the state of the objects that inhabit an era of wild mediatic reproduction. His work process is based on finding, combining and remixing poor materials, found objects and waste, signs that encourage him to experiment with new ways of interpreting what surrounds us.
More: https://christianlagata.com/