Lia Darjes was born in Berlin in 1984 and grew up in Hamburg. She studied with Ute Mahler at HAW in Hamburg and then as a master class student with Ute Mahler and Ingo Taubhorn at Ostkreuzschule in Berlin, where she started teaching in 2018. Her work has been exhibited in Germany, France, Canada, Russia and Switzerland and published in national and international media such as M, le Monde, and CNN. She has received various scholarships and awards, including the young talent award of the Art Prize of the Lotto Foundation Brandenburg.
Her work 'Tempora Morte' is an authentic documentary still-life study from the unofficial roadside-market of Russia's little exclave Kaliningrad.
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.
Poly’s art practice is merging her previous experience in documentary and staged photography. The photographer interprets cultural and visual codes of typical Ukrainian everyday life, predominantly in the fields of eroticism, fashion, and novel notions of beauty. The artist states that she finds herself constantly inspired by “trivial things, everyday events, stories from the lives of friends, and own experience”.
Julie Poly’s exhibitions serve as a continuation to her artistic message. Her ‘mockumentarian’ and slightly grotesque projects often come back to the areas of their genesis, like railway station (Ukrzaliznytsia series) or arcade centres (Kosmolot playing cards).
He has been dealing with photography in his artistic practice since 2013, attending courses organized by the Municipality of Maroussi, under the general supervision and responsibility of the photographer Dionysis Koutsis. He is a member of the Hellenic Photographic Society
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.
I like to approach different styles of photography, but I prefer the most URBEX (Urban Exploration) photography. I think this genre represents me the best, that's why I'm even more concerned with my project called PLACES SUFFERING.
I'm fascinated by the idea of going into abandoned buildings, finding out their stories, what happened there, why they were abandoned. When I enter such places it is as if I go back in time, I try to imagine those times, to feel the lives of the people who have passed there. Every time I go to a new location, I encompass the emotions for what I can find or what I can meet. We have found all sorts of things undamaged for years, left to chance, from documents, photographs, paintings, dishes, money, clothes, toys, to dead, mummified animals.
Orpana holds a BA from visual arts from Turku University of Applied Science Art Academy and is currently finishing her MA studies in photography at Aalto University, School of Arts. Orpana has also studied fine arts at the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain.
Lately her works have been exhibited in a solo show in Turku Kunstahalle, Turku, Finland (2020), curated group show in Latvian Museum of photography, Riga, Latvia (2019) and in Gallery Lapinlahti in Helsinki, Finland (2018), solo exhibition in Ostrabothnian Photography Centre, Lapua, Finland (2017) and her photographs have been published in a book called A book of lies : väritettyjä totuuksia, (valokuvauksen opiskelijat ry, Aalto Books & Musta taide. Helsinki, 2013).
Her artistic practice is developed under the motto No one left behind. It consists of the production of photo-objects and working with marginal/hidden objects and photographs, together with research materials transformed into photo-video installations reflecting the life of unknown people.
Cristina participated in over 35 exhibitions in Romania and abroad, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Portugal, and Hungary. Cristina's recent projects focus on interpreting memory objects and integrating photographic material into contemporary spaces through visual installations. Notable displays include her contribution to Fragmentum at Palatele Brâncovenești and Here they lived at Carol 53 and the International Visual Art Biennale Brașov (2021, 2023).
Cristina has published studies in Anthropology of East Europe Review, Indiana University; History of Communism in Europe, IICCMER; Studies and History Articles, Romanian Society of Historical Sciences; Romanian Contemporary Photography Influx; Revelar, Universidade do Porto. She is also the author of "Photographic collections and archives today, in the digital world," published by Tritonic.
Duchateau is an artist who mainly works with photography. By applying a wide variety of contemporary strategies. His photos are an investigation into representations of (seemingly) concrete ages. By studying sign processes, signification and communication, he makes work that generates diverse meanings, associations and meanings collide. Space becomes time and language becomes image.
His works are characterised by the use of everyday events in an atmosphere of middleclass mentality in which recognition plays an important role.
By taking daily life as subject matter while commenting on the everyday aesthetic of middle class values, he plays with the idea of the mortality of an artwork confronted with the power of a transitory appearance, which is, by being restricted in time, much more intense. His works question the conditions of appearance of an image in the context of contemporary visual culture in which images, representations and ideas normally function. He makes work that deals with the documentation of events and the question of how they can be presented.Lars Duchateau currently lives and works in Hasselt and Ghent.
Lucrezia's work focuses on two main themes: individual and collective perception and mnemonic practices in archival research. Materiality, its three-dimensional presence and tactile sensations are essential for the elaboration of her photographic research, which takes shape in the moment of installation and fruition. The initial focus on an inner perception has developed over the years into a reflection on the perception of archival material and the layers of memory, leading to a phenomenological investigation of the photographic act.
Nina Medioni (b. 1991) lives and works in Marseille. In 2015, After graduating with an MA in Literature, she enrolled at the National School of Photography in Arles. Here, she developed an interest in documentary photography; in the image as a tool to meet the ‘other’. In 2019, Medioni spent several months with her Jewish Orthodox family in Tel Aviv, marking the start of her series, The Veil. The project has since been exhibited in both France and Israel. In 2022, she began the Un été au Prépaou series, which charts her encounter with a working-class neighbourhood in the city of Istres. She is currently editing her first film, Le Chalet, which studies the complexities of a neighbourhood surrounding her uncle's house – a seemingly misplaced cottage in the Parisian cityscape.
website: nina-medioni.com
Instagram: @ninamedioni
Cristina Gârleșteanu (b. 1984) is a photographer and marketing professional. With a background in social sciences – she attended the Faculty of International Relations and European Studies at UBB Cluj-Napoca – photography was a means to bring her closer to this field. A former Editor-in-Chief of the online magazine FOTO4all, Gârleșteanu is also a co-founder of Bucharest Photo Week. Her images have been published in a range of magazines, whilst her work has featured in various group and solo exhibitions, most recently in the USA and Mexico. Gârleșteanu is a member of Women Street Photographers. Her photobook, The Flight Odyssey, was published in 2022.
Reinis Hofmanis (b. 1985) is a Riga-based artist and photographer. He studied photography at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Hannover, Germany, and obtained an MA from the Visual Communication Department of the Art Academy of Latvia. His works are characterised by a socio-anthropological point of view – which manifests in an interest in typifying different groups of society, their behavioural pattern, and tier effect on the surrounding environment. Hofmanis won the main prize at Archifoto in 2012 and 2013, and was awarded 2nd place in the Architecture category of the Sony World Photography Awards. His works have been featured in publications such as The New York Times, Financial Times, Der Spiegel, Esquire, Bloomberg, Le Monde, The Globe and Mail, and The British Journal of Photography
Polina Davydenko works mostly with the medium of photography overlapping with the media of video, audio and text. The key theme of her work is narrative and its various forms. She focuses on human-animal relationships and cultural stereotypes related to the issue. These become the starting point for playing out other contexts, which the author visually sensitively connects into one disturbing message.
Polina was born in Ukraine, but since childhood she lives in Czech Republic. She completed study at the Ivars Gravlejs’ Photography Studio at the FFA BUT in Brno. She has furthered her education at KASK in Gent, FAMU in Prague and at the FFA’s Studio Environment.
https://polidavydenko.tumblr.com/
Olga Cafiero (*1982) is a Swiss and Italian photographer based in Lausanne. After a BA in photography and an MA in art direction at ECAL, she studied art history at University of Lausanne. Her work has been shown in exhibitions in Switzerland and internationally since 2008, and regularly published in international magazines since 2009. Her awards include Foam Talent (selection), Hyères Festival de Mode et de Photographie, BFF-Förderpreis (laureate), a Swiss Design Award (laureate) and L’enquête photographique Neuchâteloise (laureate).
Mateusz Kowalik is a documentary photographer based in Warsaw, Poland. In his work he explores the issues of contemporary society. He studies at the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava, Czech Republic. He is a graduate of the Sputnik Photos Mentoring Program and the PARALLEL European Photo Based Platform. He showed his works, among others at festivals in Wrocław, Łódź, Kraków, Hanover, Zagreb and Los Angeles, as well as at the Robert Capa Photography Center in Budapest.
www.mateusz-kowalik.com
Wathne studied Visual Arts at the Trondheim Academy of Fine Art and Photography at the Norwegian School of Photography.