The
Professional
Emese Bíborka Szakács
Lives and Works in
Budapest
Emese Bíborka Szakács studied at the Institute of Communication and Media Studies at Pázmány Péter Catholic University. She is currently pursuing a degree in Art History at the University of Pécs.
Her interests focus on the past and present of experimental photography, as well as the cultural role of new media. As a staff member of the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center, she is involved in organizing international exhibitions and professional programs. She also works as a curator and writer within the frameworks of the Studio of Young Photographers (FFS) and the Studio of Young Artists’ Association (FKSE), contributing to the professional development and realization of several exhibitions in recent years.
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Emese Bíborka Szakács
was nominated by
Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center
in
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Each year every member of the FUTURES European Photography Platform nominates a set of artists and projects to become part of the FUTURES network.
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Maria Beatriz de Vilhena (b. 1991) is a Lisbon based photographer, with a professional background in architecture. She studied photography at CFP Bauer Milan and holds a master's degree in architecture from the University of Lisbon.
Her photographic work explores the pluralism of human nature through belief and collective identity, as well as issues related to memory and noetic. In recent projects, she has been working on the border between fiction and reality, through myths and tales connected to personal and historical events.
Recent shows include One dark night, Lazarus disappeared (Coruchéus Gallery, Lisbon, 2025), Five Relics, Five Photographers (Museum of São Roque, Lisbon, 2025), and Real Life is Not Black and White (Paris Photo, 2024).
Her photographic work explores the pluralism of human nature through belief and collective identity, as well as issues related to memory and noetic. In recent projects, she has been working on the border between fiction and reality, through myths and tales connected to personal and historical events.
Recent shows include One dark night, Lazarus disappeared (Coruchéus Gallery, Lisbon, 2025), Five Relics, Five Photographers (Museum of São Roque, Lisbon, 2025), and Real Life is Not Black and White (Paris Photo, 2024).



Florine Thiebaud (b. 1992, France) is a photographer based in Marseille.
With a post-documentary practice that combines photography and writing, she places a significant emphasis on publishing. She explores the notions of imprisonment and isolation, the passage of time, loss of control, identity, and her connection to others.
From 2016 to 2019, she developed two projects focused on the consequences of the waiting for papers for exiled people in Greece, placing the relationship with the other at the heart of her practice.The first was the project Exils, which won the Roger de Conynck Prize and was exhibited at the Recylart Gallery in Brussels, followed by Breaking Point. The latter was co-published as a book in May 2022 with Stockmans Art Books, and was exhibited at FOMU in Antwerp and at the Contretype Gallery in Brussels as part of the .TIFF selection and Propositions d’Artistes.
Developing her reflections on notions of imprisonment and isolation and their consequences, she is currently working on a project about families of incarcerated people, Des Ondes (On Waves), based on a personal story. This project has received support from the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, and part of it was already exhibited in 2023 at the Delta Cultural Center in Namur as part of a group exhibition.
In parallel, following confrontations with her own physical and mental limits facing depression, she developped a new series of self-portraits: Revenir (Coming back). Using once again repetitive imagery and a consistent aesthetic, she explores the intersection of vulnerability, isolation, and transformation through self-portraiture. Photographing herself during moments of crisis and depression, she seeks to capture the disconnect between her inner world and reality.



Anna Safiatou Touré (Bamako, Mali, born in 1996) is a Franco-Malian multidisciplinary artist based in Brussels. She graduated from the Nantes Saint-Nazaire School of Fine Arts and the ENSAV La Cambre in photography. Anna Safiatou was awarded the Médiatine Prize in 2022 and the Roger De Conynck Fund in 2023-24.
Her work explores the space that unites or separates the two sides of every migratory narrative. The journey through this personal, historical, and cultural blending fills for her empty or unanswered spaces. On her own scale, she wishes to materialize this absence by creating her own evidence to make history heard—rendering the absence visible to tell stories from these new bodies. Like a certain poetry of emptiness, couldn’t the world be told in reverse, like a stencil, from the edge?



Michelle Piergoelam (b. 1997) is a photographer who studied at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, the Netherlands. She creates visual stories based on dreams, memories, cultural myths and traditions. Despite her Surinamese background, Piergoelam knew little about this country; a curiosity to learn more prompted her to seek out new narratives. With her images, the artist stimulates the imagination and narrative culture – to keep their transmission alive. Her practice applies varied photographic techniques while using elements of the night; details become the subject when light strikes over them, and the smallest gestures speak loud and clear. In 2020, Piergoelam’s The Untangled Tales project was nominated for both Blurring the Lines and the Kassel Dummy Award, and was awarded second prize at the Zilveren Camera Prize for Storytelling.

Romane Iskaria is a French photographer and artist based in Brussels, Belgium (1997). The photographer highlights the injustices and inequalities of invisible communities with a documentary and fictional approach. Her images, specific to “Care”, tell a story and allow her subjects to become aware of their painful stories. She creates a connection with these subjects that goes beyond the simple link between the photographer and her model.
The artist uses photography and the field of video, but also textiles, sound, and sculpture to create immersive installations. She tells stories that take the form of a long-term investigation across several territories. Romane replays specific rituals and stories that also transcend borders, addressing questions around migration and exile. The photographer creates plastic forms allowing her to subvert the codes of documentary.
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Andrea Camiolo (Leonforte, 1998) is an Italian photographer and editor, currently a PhD candidate in "Science for Artistic Production and Heritage" at the Academy of Fine Arts in Catania.
In 2022 he was selected as one of the finalists of Paris Photo Carte Blanche, won the Comisso Prize and the Best Portfolio Prize at the Ragusa Foto Festival.
In 2023 he was selected as one of the finalists for the Luigi Ghirri Prize/Young Italian Photography #10, he was a finalist for the Terna Prize and lastly one of the winners of the ‘Italy is a Desire’ call for new works promoted by Direzione Generale Creatività Contemporanea (DGCC) of the Ministry of Culture.
Andrea has exhibited his projects in several group exhibitions at various institutions, including:
MUFOCO Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea; Palazzo Binelli, Carrara; Casa Testori, Milan; MIA Photo Fair, Milan; Fotografia Europea, Reggio Emilia; CAMERA Centro Italiano per la Fotografia, Turin; Palazzo Cosentini, Ragusa; Photo Open Up, Padua; Palazzo Giacomelli, Treviso; Verzasca Foto Festival.
His works have been acquired in the collection of MUFOCO - Museo Fotografia Contemporanea in Cinisello Balsamo and in private collections.
He is co-founder of DORSOPRESS, a small independent publishing house focused in contemporary photography.

Julius Thissen (1993, the Netherlands) lives and works in Arnhem, NL. Their work investigates themes of community and representation, masculinity, sports, and competition. Originating from their background as a performance artist, Thissen's photographic practice aims to create narratives that explore the fine line between performing and failing. These themes are closely tied to contemporary performance-driven culture and the influence of societal expectations on behavior. Their work is deeply rooted in personal experiences as a genderqueer and transmasculine individual. Thissen strongly opposes the restrictive and often binary narratives imposed on transgender and queer individuals.
Thissen has been nominated for the Hendrik Valk Prize, Arnhemse Nieuwe, and the Warsteiner Blooom Awards. In 2023, they received the Artist Basis Fund and, more recently, a Mondriaan Fund Artist Project Grant for their new project Bones of Graphene, Skin of Kevlar.



Born in 2001, Chernihiv, Ukraine. Started doing photography in 2019.
Graduated the cinematography faculty of the Kyiv National I. K. Karpenko-Kary Theatre, Cinema and Television University.
In 2019 completed the MYPH school from Serhiy Melnitchenko and the concept photography course from Roman Pyatkovka in 2020.
Member of UWPO and UAPP.



Thi My Lien Nguyen (b. 1995) is a Swiss-Vietnamese photographer and artist based in Switzerland. She received her Bachelor's degree in Camera Arts from the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts in 2017. In her artistic practice she deals with the feeling and understanding of belonging, participation and the sense of home, whereas she is strongly interested in diasporic and post-migrant realities and stories. Through participatory and inclusive methods, performative and culinary activations she seeks to establish more inclusive spaces to create more understanding and representations between communities. She works with traditions, rituals, folklore, photography and food. Her work has been exhibited in multiple exhibitions including the 22nd Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil in São Paulo (2023), Museum Haus Konstruktiv Zürich (2023), Plat(t)form, Fotomuseum Winterthur (2022), Photo Hanoi, Vincom Center for Contemporary Art (VCCA) (2021). Nguyen is part of the curatorial team at Les Complices*, a self-organised community-based off-space in Zurich, committed to support the ideas and works of queer, trans, inter, non-binary, women* and BIPoC.



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
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Salvatore Vitale (b. 1986, Palermo, Italy) is a Swiss-based artist, director, and professor whose work explores the complexity of contemporary societies. Using expanded and speculative storytelling through mixed media techniques, he focuses on the politics of systems that regulate modernity and the impact of technological transformations.
Vitale is the Artistic Director of EXPOSED Torino Foto Festival and FUTURES Photography, both international platforms dedicated to contemporary photography. He also serves as a Professor at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, where he leads the Transmedia Storytelling Programme. Previously, he was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of YET magazine, an international photography publication.
Vitale’s work has received international awards. It is featured in several public and private collections and has been widely exhibited in museums and at festivals worldwide.

Emese Mucsi is a Hungarian-born curator, and art critic. Emese curates exhibitions where photography is interpreted in the context of contemporary art and works with artists who have an expanded idea of photography and produce photo-based works. Her projects bring together artists and photographers with photojournalists, writers, editors, and other thinkers to experiment with new approaches to photography. She graduated from the Faculty of Contemporary Art Theory and Curatorial Studies at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in 2013, and from the Faculty of Hungarian Literature and Linguistics at the University of Szeged in 2017. She is a member of the curators’ collective BÜRO imaginaire since 2012. Since 2013, she ran projects as a freelance curator. From 2014 to 2018, she was the Editor-in-Chief of Artmagazin Online. Emese is a curator of the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center, Budapest since 2018. She is the member of Global Photographies Network since 2020. She founded DOXA exhibition space and editorial den in 2022. She is doing her PhD in the Film, Media, and Contemporary Culture PhD program at Eötvös Loránd University. Emese is a guest lecturer at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (2023) and the University of Szeged (2024).

Julia Gelezova is a Cultural Producer and Curator, specialising in contemporary lens-based practices. She is General and Project Manager for PhotoIreland, producing events throughout the year like the annual PhotoIreland Festival and Critical Academy, while collaborating on ambitious projects like Creative Europe Photography Platforms—Parallel and Futures. Julia is co-editor of OVER Journal: The Critical Journal of Photography and Visual Culture for the 21st Century. In 2024, she has founded vicinities.network - a peer network for Visual Arts curators and professionals based in Ireland.
She has ample experience in producing exhibitions and events, including curatorial work and project management, has vast and successful experience in personal and collective application writing for bodies like the Arts Council of Ireland and local councils. She has participated in portfolio reviews, acted as visiting lecturer, and also worked in an editorial capacity and translation for artists and other arts professionals, including work for The Routledge Guide to Photography and Visual Culture. Most recently, she curated the 2021 edition of PhotoIreland Festival and was the Centre Culturel Irlandais cultural producer resident 2022. She is a member of the AICA International Association of Art Critics.

Danaé Panchaud is a Swiss exhibition curator, museologist and lecturer specialising in photography. She has been the director of the Centre de la photographie Genève since 2022, after serving from 2018 to 2021 as director and curator of the Photoforum Pasquart in Biel, Switzerland. She trained in photography at the Vevey School of Photography before completing a bachelor’s degree in visual arts with a specialisation in curatorial practices at Geneva University of Art and Design. She later studied museology at Birkbeck, University of London, earning a master’s degree in 2017. She has held positions in several Swiss institutions in the fields of contemporary art, design and science, including the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, where she was a research associate from 2007 to 2012, the Gallery SAKS in Geneva in 2012-2013, the Fondation Verdan in Lausanne as scientific collaborator, and the mudac in Lausanne, where she was in charge of the public relations from 2012 to 2017. As a free-lance curator, she has curated exhibitions for several Swiss and international museums, independent spaces and galleries since 2012. She regularly writes texts for monographs of contemporary artists, exhibition catalogues, and thematic publications such as Flora Photographica, co-authored with William Ewing and published by Thames & Hudson in 2022. She was a lecturer at the Vevey School of Photography from 2014 to 2018, and regularly lectures at art and photography schools in Switzerland. In 2023, she joined the teaching faculty of the CAS in Theory and History of Photography at University of Zurich.
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