The
Artist
Nazlı Yıldırım
Lives and Works in
Dublin
Nazlı Yıldırım was born in Ankara and is living in Ireland. She studied at Istanbul University Faculty of Letters. After teaching for a while, she worked as an editor in the publishing industry. Nazlı’s articles have been published in various magazines, newspapers and online platforms in Greece, Belgium and Turkey. Nazlı released her first photo fanzine called Hayret. Her creative journey involves documenting the impact of factors like class, culture, gender, sexual identity, and family dynamics on societies. Through the lens of her own life, she delves into subjects such as gender, cultural identity, discrimination, and the experiences of LGBTI+ communities.
Projects
2024
Look At Me! Who Am I?
'Look At Me! Who Am I?' explores the journey of a Muslim woman discovering her lesbian identity in the quiet presence of nature. The photographs reflect her profound conflict between faith, societal expectations, and personal desires, visualised through the use of hijab and religious symbols. Empty spaces, ruined structures, and barren landscapes symbolise the loss of belonging and the search for a new identity. This work is not only a personal exploration but also a representation of the struggle for visibility by those often rendered invisible.
Nazlı Yıldırım
was nominated by
PhotoIreland
in
2025
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.
Selection Committee
Ángel Luis González and Julia Gelezova, PhotoIreland
Ciara Hickey
Julia Bunnemann
Mariama Attah
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Sara Perovic’s photography begins with the personal,
drawing from her own experiences and memories, and
expands into broader themes of repetition, abstraction,
and identity. Her work explores how personal moments
shape perception and emotional expression. In Palmeral
(2017), Perovic uses texture, repetition, and the fragility
of nature to reveal the unseen complexities of plants.
My Father’s Legs (2020) blends personal reflection with
artistic exploration, confronting memory and healing
through repetitive gestures, navigating emotional
expression and abstraction. TWO (2024) explores
human relationships, visualizing emotional connections
with metaphorical imagery and a poetic “hugs ballad.”
In Home Mirror I, Perovic catalogs her belongings to
explore identity as both a collection of material and
memory.
Her book My Father’s Legs was shortlisted for the
Les Rencontres d’Arles Prix du Livre d’Auteur and the
Aperture/Paris Photo First Book Award. Perovic also
founded aTree, a fanzine promoting young photographers,
available at MoMA Library in New York. She works as a
photographer and architect in Berlin.
Masha Weisberg (b. 1997, Ukraine) is a visual artist currently based in Vancouver, Canada. Working primarily with photography—ranging from historical and alternative processes to experimental and mixed-media approaches—Weisberg explores themes of generational trauma, cycles of human history, motherhood, and the complex relationship between personal and collective memory. Her practice blends abstract and narrative-driven imagery, engaging with photography as a medium beyond documentation, often intersecting with installation and video art.
Her ongoing projects investigate inherited histories, war trauma, and the fragility of human experience.
Maria Høy Hansen, b. 1995, is a Danish photojournalist with a BA from the Danish School of Media & Journalism. Through in-depth photography, her self-chosen work mainly focuses on systemic stories about human rights issues and ideology. Working with sensitive topics Maria’s work always starts with considerations of the lives of people in front of her and her role in portraying them.
Bo Vloors (she/her) is a visual artist, writer, photographer and filmmaker based in Brussels. Using image and text, her work revolves around human relations, within and with their surroundings, and the influential power of images. The Image stands central in her practice. Inspired by natural cycles and symbiotic arrangements, her work finds its origins in the repeated consultation of an ever-expanding archive built up over the past decade. Exploring her role as an image-maker (both in images and words), she defines her writings as The Missing Image, serving a complementary, affirmative or rhetorical purpose in relation to the actual image. Striving to balance aesthetics and content, the formats she uses may vary from publications, spatial installations, audio-visual to audio-performative. Still, The Image remains rooted in the core of her artistic practice, both as subject and material.
Her work has been exhibited at Beursschouwburg (BE), Z33 (BE), Argos (BE), Art au Centre (BE), Decoratelier (BE), SB34 (BE), De Studio (BE), Het Bos (BE), OFFoff cinema (BE), CinemaTEK (BE), Bizet Bizar (BE), Radio Panik (BE), RAVI (BE), Folle Béton film festival (FR), Lateral film Festival (IT), San Sebastian film Festival (ES), Cashmere Radio (DE) and Dublin Digital Radio (IE).
Thalles Piaget (*1996) is a human being - not an artificial intelligence - born in Brazil and living in Biel/Bienne - CH. Essentially vagabond, Thalles is inspired by readings, walks, and reflections. Capturing a moment that doesn’t truly exist, trying to transform the ordinary into a dreamlike experience. Its artistic approach is at the border of dreams, science, and absurdity. Wandering, guided by the moment, playing with its non-existence.
“In my work, I aim to open a window to a dreamlike digital universe composed of surfaces, reflections, and light, free from its commercial intent yet infused with a poetic perspective on the machinery’s materials. In my photographs and installations, I want to explore and question the possibilities of our digital images and their inflationary use in our daily lives. While using the medium of photography, my aim is not to document specific scenes or compositions, but rather to seek what is between the subject and the camera and to capture the moments in between. Photography serves as a fundamental tool in my creative work, yet paradoxically, it is the medium with which I maintain the most critical relationship.”
Based in Chisinau, Moldova, Natalia Ciobanu is an internationally recognized photographer specializing in portraits and travel photography. With over 18 years of experience, she masterfully blends color and emotion, crafting images that tell profound human stories.
Her work has been exhibited across Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine and has earned prestigious awards, including Gold Winner at the London Photography Awards, Finalist in the Smithsonian Contest, and distinctions from Nikon Photo Contest and Trierenberg Super Circuit.
For Natalia, photography is more than just capturing moments; it’s about telling stories, connecting with people, and celebrating the beauty of the world in all its diversity. Each photograph she creates is an exploration of humanity and a tribute to the colors that define our lives.
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?
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".
Emanuel Constantino (b. 2002), Portugal, is an independent photographer currently living in Porto. He has a degree in Photography from School of Media Arts and Design, in P.Porto. He is currently studying for a Master's Degree in Cinema and Photography - Specialization in Photography - at the same institution. He is interested in the practical process of photography in analog format and the unpredictability of the results it offers. His main focus of research and authorial creation is on the universe of documentary and fiction, in their various intersections and interactions. He seeks to understand and manipulate the boundary at which documentary ceases to be and begins to assert itself as fiction, and vice versa, in their mixture. Vernacular and archive photography are also areas he explores and addresses, often integrating them into his projects.
Mara Palena (1988) lives and works in Milan. Her research focuses on themes such as memory, recollection, and identity. She works with photography, video, and sound, reworking materials from archives, often open and participatory, like home movies, and drawing on a personal archive of photographic images that she has been curating for years to document her life. Her work has been exhibited at various international festivals, venues, and galleries, including the Guardian Art Center in Beijing, Galleria Studio G7 in Bologna, Careof, Marsèll Paradise, Nowhere Gallery, Pananti Atelier, and Video Sound Art in Milan, the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Madrid, MOPLA in Los Angeles, Artphilein Foundation in Lugano, and Recontemporary in Turin. Between 2021 and 2024, she was a finalist in several art prizes, including the Lucie Foundation, Combat Prize, Premio Fabbri, New Post Photography, and Artphilein Photo Book Contest. In 2022, she was selected by Camera Torino for FUTURES Photography. Her work Oikeiôsis won the 2022 Surprize Award from Sprint and the Marcelo Burlon Foundation. The editorial project was curated and published by Witty Books in 2023 and was included by Photo España among the 100 best books published in 2024.
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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.
During the Summer 2020 lockdown he launched the critical publication OVER Journal, now distributed globally. He received the Arts Council of Ireland’s Visual Arts Bursary to deepen research on the broad historical and specific artistic context of Photography in Ireland, to curate an ambitious survey exhibition in PhotoIreland Festival 2022 and to publish a series of publications on the matter. He regularly contributes to publications such as the forthcoming The Routledge Companion to Global Photographies, edited by Lucy Soutter, Duncan Wooldridge.
See some of his Graphic and Web Design work in the 100 Design Archive.
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.