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Ilias Lois pursued his education at the Department of Photography & Audiovisual Arts at the UniWA and furthered his studies at the School of Fine Arts in Venice. His artistic endeavours have garnered international recognition, with his works featured in institutions, festivals, and prominent photography publications. In 2018, he received the title of “Young Greek Photographer” from APhF, and in 2019, he earned the “Lensculture Emerging Talent” award for his series, Aisle Seat. In addition to his artistic pursuits, Lois serves as editor of the photography magazine Velvet Eyes. He is also a regular contributor to the Athens Photo Festival, where he recently curated the exhibition Good Advice & Other Recipes (2022) at the Benaki Museum. He contributes to the field of photography education as a teacher at the Hellenic Centre of Photography and Paper Drop Lab, where he is in charge of project development and curation classes. In the summer of 2024 he graduated with a Master of Photography: Research and Methodology from UniWA. Lois’ work is usually developed in long-term series, in which the interplay of different photographic genres is attempted, mixing staged photography and quasi-documentary strategies. His projects are inspired by the systematic observation of communication between people, the human manipulation of materials and technology and body language. The artist’s approach pays close attention to the practices of transferring a three-dimensional world onto a two-dimensional surface, as well as to the reverse process that follows. He is particularly interested in the sequencing of photographs while researching and practising non-linear forms of narration, both in his personal and curatorial work.

Camilla Ferrari (b. 1992) is a visual artist working with images and video based in Milan, Italy. Her work blends still and moving images to explore the ambiguity of perception, the coexistence of dream and reality, the eloquence of silence, and the poetry found in everyday life. Her portfolio includes features in prominent publications such as National Geographic, The New York Times, Essenziale, NPR, Artsy, and Domus. She is a Canon Ambassador. In addition to her personal projects and editorial contributions, Camilla has collaborated with commercial clients for special commissions, including names like Apple, Lamborghini, Marcolin, and Sony Music. In 2021 she was one of the five finalists of the ING Talent Award and in 2020 she was nominated by Camera Torino for Futures Photography, a European Platform focused on amplifying emerging artists in contemporary photography. In 2019 she was selected by PDN as one of PDN’s 30: New and Emerging Photographers to Watch worldwide and by Artsy as one of the “20 Rising Female Photojournalists”.

Marija Mandić (b. 1990, Novi Sad, Serbia) is an artist whose practice spans photography, text, drawing, and found footage. Her work delves into the themes of identity, memory and the past, often within a familial context, blending personal narratives with broader social issues. In 2023, Mandić was a finalist for the Mangelos Award, part of the Young Visual Artists Awards network. She won the Fotograf Magazine (CZ) open call in 2022 and received the VID Foundation for Photography grant in 2021 for her project White Bee. Her accolades also include the Dositeja scholarship, a grant from the Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic, and the Mali Princ Foundation award. Mandić holds a PhD in Visual Communication from the Faculty of Art and Design in Ústí nad Labem, where she lectured from 2015 to 2019.

Karol Szymkowiak (b. 1983) is a photographer, photobook artist, curator and educator based in Poznań, Poland. Self-taught photographer, specializing in documentary photography and photo collages - work with archives. His work revolves around themes such as environmental problems, military and civil defence, physical and mental immobilisation. He is constantly fascinated by finding surrealism in faithfully recording reality using photography. As a photographer, he has participated in over a dozen group exhibitions. Since 2015 he is art curator of a long-term photography documentary project The Września Collection (Kolekcja Wrzesińska) whose patron is the Mayor of the City and Municipality of Września. As part of his work on this project, he is collaborating with leading Polish photographers to create photobooks and exhibitions about his home town of Września. Karol is a member of The Association of Polish Art Photographers (ZPAF) and a scholarship recipient of the Marshal of the Wielkopolska Region in the field of culture. He is also a lecturer in photography at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.

Visual artist, burned-out climate activist, educator. Born in 1987 in Warsaw, Poland. Graduate of the University of Arts in Poznań , majoring in Photography. She heads the Second Studio of Photography (together with Dr. Mariusz Filipowicz) and the Studio of Photography Basics at the Faculty of Graphics of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. A member of the Pracownia Wschodnia Association, the Program Council of the Pracownia Wschodnia Gallery, and the P.H.U. Sitex collective. She is interested in grassroots practices of self-organisation and resistance. She navigates the conceptual realm that exists both within and beyond the binary oppositions foundational to the construction of Western civilization (‘culture versus nature’ and ‘art versus science’). She employs various strategies – visual art, academic research, activist experience – to transcend, deconstruct and rethink these binaries, bringing seemingly heterogeneous fi elds of knowledge to life. Although her practice is based on abstract ideas, the artist always remains close to material reality, focusing on ways of understanding (and feeling) how parts of the ecosystem live and die and how they affect each other.

Milena Soporowska is a visual artist based in Poland. Her work explores, among other things, the intertwining of everyday life with magic and the occult, questioning the concept of home as a safe, familiar haven. She is interested in the combination of alternative medicine and psychoanalysis, and the overlap between Christianity, esotericism and folk spirituality.She graduated in Art History, presenting her master's thesis on the influence of spiritualistic and mediumistic photography on art in the light of Freud's category of unheimlich. She also studied photography, museology and psychotronics. Moreover, Milena is a graduate of the Sputnik Photos mentoring programme.Read more

Nuno Alexandre Serrão is a Portuguese photographer and director whose work explores the relationship between natural landscapes and human-made structures, combining cinematic formalism and raw storytelling. Led by curiosity, he often creates or documents non-linear narratives about uncomfortable and ambiguous topics that challenge comfort zones and encourage reflection, ultimately provoking questions about what is fundamental or emergent. His work has gained international attention, and is published in established media outlets like HuffPost, Público, Expresso, L’Hémcycle, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, and GQ. It has also been exhibited in cultural institutions such as Fotogalerie Friedrichshain in Berlin, ImageNation in Milan, ArtIcon in Paris, and the National Museum of Finland. His short films and commercial projects have been recognized at festivals like Aesthetica, Caminhos do Cinema Português, FUSO, and Inshadow Festival. Critics describe Serrão’s work as ‘pursuing the beauty that emerges at the intersection of nature and humanity’ (Ana Marques Maia, Público, 2024). Claire Ducresson-Boët describes his landscapes as ‘places of passage and transition where time seems to stand still, offering a moment of quietness before life resumes.’

Clare Lyons (b.1993) is an artist and photographer working between Belfast and Dublin. Considering the photograph as an object is integral to Clare’s practice. Her work often employs methods borrowed from sculpture and printmaking to draw attention to this, blurring the lines of what photography is or can be. Clare’s practice has been largely autobiographical, focusing on deeply personal themes and stories of healing and catharsis in the face of trauma and mental illness. Recent works represent a transitory phase for Clare as her practice shifts and changes, no longer confined to being the subject of her own work. Clare was one of five Irish Talents selected by PhotoIreland for the FUTURES European Photography Platform in 2021, and in 2022 represented Ireland at 'Visage(s) d'Europe' curated by Collectif Fetart in Paris. Clare presented her debut solo exhibition 'To Jack' at The Limerick Museum in October 2024.

Zoe is a photographer from Co. Antrim, now living in Edinburgh. Zoe is interested in the relationship between humans and the environment, as well as the systems of classification that we use to make sense of the world around us. She works on long term photographic projects, drawing on scientific and historic research as well as lived experience to tell a story about a place or subject. Her background research has been informed by photography’s history as a tool of imperialism and this is something that she works to recognise and subvert within her photographic practice. She currently teaches on the Stills School, an alternative education programme for young people and is a visiting lecturer at Queen Margaret University. She has received funding from Edinburgh City Council and the Richard & Siobhan Coward Foundation and was recently included in Fantasy Island, a publication documenting the last 50 years of photography in Ireland. Zoe participated in PhotoIreland's New Irish Works III between 2019 and 2021.