The
Artist
Kaarina-Sirkku
Lives and Works in
Kaarina-Sirkku Kurz (Finnish/ German) is a German-Finnish photographer and visual artist currently based in Berlin. She studied in Bremen, Lahti and Helsinki where she graduated with a Master’s degree from the Department of Photography at Aalto University School of Arts.
Her series Supernature, still in progress, presents in a very conceptual way her concern and fascination for the human body, something that she has already begun to work in her previous award-winning project UNGLEICHGEWICHT. The photobook of the same name won the Nordic Dummy Award in 2015 and was published by Kehrer Verlag. In 2017 the publication was honored with the Finnish Photobook of the Year Award, organized by the Association of Photographic Artists and The Finnish Museum of Photography. Photographer Alec Soth chose the winner.
The coherence of her discourse and career, her way of getting into the subjects she photographs, with a very particular narrative, make Sirkku's work particularly interesting to us. In addition, being in a project which is in progress, we believe that Futures will give her opportunities and opinions to continue or find exhibition opportunities for it.
Projects
Supernature
I am fascinated by the human body, which is substantive and at the same time sensing, thus it is object and subject. I enjoy investigating this phenomenon from different angles and photographically explore ways of how people deal with their bodies. Currently I approach the issue of body modification in the context of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. The body of work is still in progress.
Kaarina-Sirkku
was nominated by
PHotoESPAÑA
in
2018
Show all projects
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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Rui Costa, Vila Franca de Xira, Portugal, 1989.
He began his studies at the Portuguese Institute of Photography in Lisbon in 2020, wherehe became interested in developing documentary and authorial projects. In 2022 heattended the Masterclass Narrativa with the photographer Mário Cruz. Since 2023, he has been a teacher at the Portuguese Institute of Photography in Lisbon.
Winner of the Fnac New Talents Award 2023, in the Photography category, with the essay “Uma Azeitona Bordada em Azul".
Sarah Mei Herman holds a BA in Photography from The Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, and an MA in Fine Art Photography from London’s Royal College of Art.
Her personal projects explore relationships, intimacy, loneliness, longing, and the human urge for physical proximity, often focusing on the vulnerability of transitory life stages.
Her work has been exhibited internationally, at institutions and festivals such as The National Portrait Gallery, London; The Benaki Museum, Athens; Photo Elysée, Lausanne; Le Château d’Eau, Toulouse; The Jewish History Museum, Amsterdam; and the JIMEI x ARLES International Photo Festival, Xiamen. Her projects have been recognised by a range of prizes and awards, including the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize, the Hyères Festival of Fashion and Photography and the Arnold Newman Prize For New Directions in Photographic Portraiture. Her work is found in several public and private art collections, whilst her images have been published by the likes of iD, Vogue Italia, Foam Magazine, Paper Journal and Dear Dave. Herman’s second photo book – Julian & Jonathan – was recently published by the London-based GOST Books. Future 2025 exhibitions include solo shows at Concertgebouw Brugge in Belgium, and at GLAZ festival in Rennes, France.
Tashiya de Mel is a photographer, environmental advocate, and communications specialist from Colombo, Sri Lanka who uses visual storytelling to create narratives that drive social change.
Her practice explores the nature and possibilities of documentary image-making and deals with themes such as colonial histories, representation, heritage, family, landscapes, and the climate crisis.
Tashiya is driven by a curiosity to forge connections with diverse disciplines such as art, history, academia and the environment. And find ways of bridging these disciplines through different forms of image-based media.
She was the recipient of the Visura grants for freelance visual journalists in 2023 for her project ‘Great Sandy River’ and received the Stroom talent award in 2024. Tashiya is a recent graduate of the ‘Photography and Society’ masters programme at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague (NL). She is based between Colombo and the Hague.
Henri Kisielewski is a self-taught French-British photographer based in London. His work addresses the relationship between images to the real world – broadly speaking he makes photographs about photography.
Research-led and informed by his studies in human geography, Henri’s work explores themes of memory, photographic representation and the porous boundary between fact and fiction in documentary media.
Working primarily with medium format film and allowing room for chance, Henri’s practice is characterised by a documentary approach based on a conceptual framework.
Henri is currently working on a new ambitious and multi-faceted project in New York State: a collective portrait of Agloe, a fictional town that came to exist in the real world. Through a variety of visual strategies – photographs, archive images, video interviews – the work probes the ‘documentary’ image in a post-truth era.
Mikkel Hørlyck (b. 1990) is an independent photojournalist and visual artist based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Once a student at Fatamorgana The Danish School of Art Photography, he holds a BA in Photojournalism from the Danish School of Media and Journalism. Hørlyck’s career began as a photojournalist intern at Politiken, a Danish daily broadsheet. His work has since been recognised by a series of prizes – including Danish Picture Of The Year, Vilnius Photo Circle and World Report Award. In 2019, Hørlyck was named Discovery Of The Year at The Lucie Awards in New York.
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.
Top researches the topics of mass surveillance, privacy, data collection.In his practice, he layers a traditional approach to documentary research with a more experimental use of new technologies (such as facial recognition, movement analysis, and deepfakes). The artist uses these technologies to visualise and examine scenarios in which people can protect themselves and their rights by gaining knowledge and reclaiming control of surveillance tools.
Top’s projects addressing human rights, police misconduct and facial recognition during protests aim to contrast the abstract nature of the algorithmic mechanisms behind mass surveillance, by providing a concrete visualisation of the phenomenon and confronting the public with the extensive amount of surveillance societies are subjected to and the ethical risks deriving, finally offering theoretical solutions.
Daniel Chatard is a German-French documentary photographer and visual researcher. He investigates themes revolving around power structures, collective identity, and trauma. Looking at landscapes as vessels of collective experiences and memories, he tells human stories in their environmental context.
Daniel graduated in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Hanover, and in Photography & Society at the Royal Academy of Arts The Hague. He lives in Hamburg and works as a freelance photojournalist with media outlets such as Die ZEIT, Der Spiegel, and Bloomberg.
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Georgiana Feidi, currently based in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, is a visual artist who
achieved her photo video MA's degree from the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca in 2020. In her artistic approach, she uses both digital and analog tools, including post-processing and the hands-on exploration of darkroom and alternative photography techniques. In her artistic endeavors, Georgiana explores themes inspired by the mysteries of the universe, nature, personal insights and experiences. Her works reflect a journey into unexplored territories, creating visual narratives that transcend conventional boundaries of thought. Over the years, she has presented her work in solo exhibitions nationally, and participated in group shows across Romania and internationally, including cities like Dortmund, Melbourne, New York, and Rome. Her work has also been featured in various online publications both nationally and internationally.
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.
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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.
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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.
Ángel Luis González Fernández is a designer, artist, and curator supporting engaging visual arts practices, winner of Business to Arts David Manley Emerging Entrepreneur Awards 2011.
His work manifests through PhotoIreland, which he founded in 2010 to stimulate a critical dialogue on Photography. He devises curatorial projects placing conversations in the public realm around visual culture, critical thinking. These include events (PhotoIreland Festival, Halftone Print Fair, arts residency How to Flatten a Mountain, and New Irish Works), a cultural hub (The Library Project: Ireland’s Art bookshop, host to a unique resource library of photobooks and a productive arts programme), publishing projects that distribute inexpensive access to local practices, research projects (Critical Academy: examining contemporary art practices). He works collaboratively with a growing network of organisations, noticeably through ambitious Creative Europe partnerships.
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Iveta Gabaliņa (1979) is a curator, artist and educator. She has studied photography at the studio of Andrejs Grants, at Bournemouth Art Institute, and in the MA programme at Alto University in Helsinki. Her work has been exhibited in Latvia and internationally, including at C/O (Berlin, Germany), GESTE (Paris), and Williams Tower Gallery (Houston, USA). Gabaliņa has participated in photography festivals in Singapore, Hanover, and elsewhere. Her work is included in the collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum, Geste Paris, and the Deutsche Börse Art Collection.
Since 2008 she has been part of ISSP team, responsible for numerous educational and curatorial projects. In 2018 she founded ISSP Gallery - an exhibition space dedicated to contemporary photography.
I’ve always loved photography, even if it sounds like a cliche. The first photos I took, I did without knowing how to do that, without paying any attention to framing, subject or composition. After a while, I began to understand what is happening in the space between me as a photographer and the subject I was photographing. And many years later, I also understood why I love to photograph. To communicate. A message, a concept, an emotion.
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