Arne Piepke

Artur Pławski is a photographer with a late debut. A graduate of Philosophy at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland, he participated in the Sputnik Photos Mentoring Program for photographers. He works in the field of documentary photography, drawing on the critical potential of imagination and subjective forms of meaning-making. In his work, he focuses on moments when facts lose their apparent obviousness, the image reveals its subjective nature, and emerging meanings point to a broader contextual framework. He explores the relationship between the individual and urban space, as well as the influence of ideology and language on perception. He is particularly interested in images that resist closure. Artur is the winner of the Photography Publication of the Year Award (Poland, 2023) and received an honourable mention at the PhMuseum Photobook Award 2025.

Anya Tsaruk is a Ukrainian photographer based in Berlin. Following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, her work now focuses on the themes of identity, trauma, migration, and community. Through photography, she aims to raise awareness about the war in her homeland and honour the resilience and strength of people impacted by it. Tsaruk's work has received several awards such as The V&A Parasol Foundation Prize for Women in Photography, Nikon & Fotobus Grant, and Cortona On The Move | BarTur Grant for Emerging Photographers. Her projects have been featured in exhibitions in Berlin, Hannover, Munich, Kyiv, Paris, Bergamo, London, Vilnius, Vancouver and Oslo.

Focusing on the role of humans within society and their direct interaction with their environment, Maxime Guedaly has been building a documentary photographic archive for the past ten years. A self-taught photographer with an engineering background, he constructs his projects from the archives he has created. Selected, organized, and related according to their purpose, these images find their place in public spaces and in venues accessible to all audiences. The formal association of several regimes of images serves as a starting point for reflection on the physical and political movements of communities engaged in society, whether they come from a cultural background linked to live performance or the associative world. Through video, the photographer establishes a dialogue between the movement of urban and human respiration, creating a common vocabulary between two entities emerging from their inertia. Evolving towards the fields of performance and collaborative art, the role of the artist becomes porous, straddling participation and documentation. While the question of the reception of the work remains unchanged, the artistic process is completely reexamined. Maxime Guedaly was born in Toulouse in 1987. He is trained as an engineer and is a self-taught photographer. He trained in authorial projects at the ENSP in Arles in 2018.

ROXANA RIOS *1994 (they/them) currently based in Leipzig, Germany. In 2017 Roxana picked up a double study at HGB Leipzig and AdBK Nuremberg and studied in the classes of Heidi Specker and Juergen Teller. After graduating in 2020 Roxana joined Isabel Lewis' class of the performing Arts.They received their Diploma in July 2023. Roxana's work has been shown at Museum Folkwang Essen, DEICHTORHALLEN Hamburg, Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig, Fotomuseum Winterthur and FOTOHOF Salzburg. Roxana was nominated for the Federal Prize for Art Students in 2020 and won the Contemporary German Photography Grant in 2024                                                                   Roxana's current practice engages in critical discussions concerning the development of (hegemonial) narratives, as well as the relations between image- and knowledge-production. Roxana examines ‘the’ body as a construct, material and representative within social orders.In this function, the work understands itself as an exercise in utopian thinking, seeing and speaking – a contribution to contemporary, social and aesthetic discourses.

Ornella Mari is a Belgian-born, Hungarian-Italian photographer based in Budapest. Her work explores themes of identity, femininity, and self-perception, often delving into the emotional and psychological landscapes of her subjects. Through a nuanced approach to portraiture, she captures the complexities of human experience, from moments of vulnerability to personal transformation. Mari’s journey with photography began as a means of self-exploration, gradually evolving into a broader investigation of societal expectations and internal struggles. Her images balance intimacy with universality, inviting viewers to reflect on themes of self-acceptance, resilience, and the fluid nature of identity. Rooted in both conceptual and documentary influences, Mari’s photography serves as a visual dialogue between the external world and inner realities. Whether through staged compositions or candid moments, her work seeks to challenge perceptions and offer new ways of seeing oneself and others.

Irish artist, Miriam O’Connor lives and works in Cork. She holds a BA in photography from Dublin Institute of Technology, and completed a Research Masters at the Institute of Art, Design & Technology, Dun Laoghaire in 2011. Drawing inspiration from the language, sights and sounds of the everyday, O’Connor’s practice frequently engages with matters which reflect her everyday surroundings, as well as her day-to-day experiences of being a photographer. Her projects have explored themes around looking and seeing; the relationship between camera and subject; the circulation and consumption of images and the complex nature of photographic representation.Her work has been exhibited and distributed extensively, with features in magazines and publications including; Camera Austria, Source Photographic Review, The New York Times and The Guardian. Recent solo shows include Sternview Gallery, Cork, Galleri Image, Denmark, The Third Space Gallery, Belfast and during ‘THERE THERE’ festival, Cork curated by Stag & Deer. In 2012, she received the Alliance Française Photography Award, which included a residency at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris. She was the recipient of the Emerging Irish Artist Residency Award [EIARA] in 2015 which included a month-long residency at Burren College of Art, Co. Clare. Publications include, ‘Attention Seekers’ (2012) ‘The Legacy Project’ (2013) and ‘Tomorrow is Sunday’ (2017). She was one of the selected artists for Greetings from Ireland (2015) and New Irish Works I & II (2013, 2016). In conjunction with Galleri Image, Denmark, she recently produced new work for FRESH EYES - International artists rethink Aarhus, which was exhibited during Aarhus Capital of Culture, 2017.

Michal Sita (1985) is a photographer and curator. Graduate of photography at the ITF in Opava and anthropology at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, where he is concluding doctoral research on social uses of the past in contemporary Poland. Interested in social memory and research strategies of photography. Curator of an interdisciplinary analysis of Wiesław Rakowski’s interwar zoological photographs, curator and producer of a series of exhibitions (including Małgorzata Lebda and Rafał Siderski, Mayumi Suzuki, Jan Kurek, Martin Parr and Rimaldas Vikšraitis, Sputnik Photos, among others), and photobook festivals. Co-author of “Củ Chi Tunnels Restoration Report” (Photographic Publication of the Year 2020 – Łódź, PL), a book relating to the activities of the Polish-Vietnamese architectural heritage conservation mission. Author of “History of Poland” vol. 1 and 2 — publications commenting on anthropological research carried out in Murowana Goślina among volunteers staging a large-scale historical pageant. Author of critical texts on photography. Lecturer at the Magdalena Abakanowicz University of Arts in Poznań.

Minh Ngọc Nguyễn (b. 1992) holds an MFA in Photography from HDK-Valand in Gothenburg and a BA in Visual Communication from the Danish School of Media and Journalism in Copenhagen. Working primarily with staged still-life photography, Nguyễn approaches the medium as both a visual practice and a cultural system, examining how images produce, circulate, and stabilise meanings of identity, desire, and representation. Minh lives and works in Copenhagen.

Hana Selena Sokolović was born in Vienna in 1999 and grew up in Belgrade. She is a visual artist and researcher working between the Balkans and the Netherlands. Her work has been shown in group exhibitions in the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, some of which are As Water Softens Stones (Royal Academy of Arts, The Hague, 2025), Push, Pull, Shift (Živi Atelje DK, Zagreb, 2025), 00:05:59 (Paradise, The Hague, 2024), and Fragments in Transit (Beetroot Studio, Thessaloniki, 2024). Alongside her artistic practice, she has worked with children in educational and socially engaged settings, an experience that continues to shape her people-centered and collaborative approach to art. Hana holds a BA in Photography and New Media from FAMU in Prague (2021) and an MA in Photography and Society from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (2025). She currently lives and works between Belgrade and The Hague.