Ieva Raudsepa (b. 1992, Latvia) holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of Latvia and a MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. Her work has been featured in i-D, The Guardian, Wallpaper, It’s Nice That, the Latvian Photography Yearbook, and elsewhere. Her series Cruise was part of the exhibition MIXTAPE at the Riga Photomonth 2016, while the book dummy was shortlisted for the Unseen Dummy Award 2016, Amsterdam, and is now released by Milda Books. In Spring 2018 her work was part of Post-Soviet Visions: image and identity in the new Eastern Europe at the Calvert 22 Foundation, London. Her exhibition It Could Just Swallow You Up at the ISSP Gallery in Riga opened July 2019.
Andrea Torres Balaguer’s work is influenced by dreams and surrealism, exploring the relationship between femininity and nature through the symbolism and dream transcription technique. Inspired by references to psychoanalysis theory and magic realism, her pictures experiment with the conscious-subconscious. Thinking about the scene-action concept, she creates pictures that suggest stories and invites the spectator to interpret them, searching to experiment with the boundaries between reality and fiction.
Her photography has appeared in National Geographic, der Spiegel, Newsweek China, Die Zeit, and many others. For her photography she was awarded with the Inge Morath award, received the VG-Bild award and won the Lotto Brandenburg Prize and many more. She has exhibited worldwide in countries like Australia, France, Germany, Switzerland - as well as China, Iceland, Ukraine and the US.
Alba received prizes in the Tokyo International Photography Competition (Japan, 2017), Landskrona Foto Festival (Sweden, 2017), Flash Forward UK (Canada, 2016) and Zona C Visual Artist Awards (Spain, 2015). He was a finalist for the Best Photobook of the Year Award by PHotoEspaña (Spain, 2020), the GetxoPhoto Festival (Spain, 2019), the BMW Art & Culture (France, 2017), Encontros da Imagem (Portugal, 2016), Grand Prix Fotofestiwal (Poland, 2016) and the Descubrimientos PHotoEspaña Award (Spain, 2015). His work has been exhibited at various galleries and museums worldwide, most recently at the Lianzhou Museum of Photography (China, 2021), Hayward Gallery (London, 2019), the Tokyo International Photography Competition (TIPC) (Japan, 2018), Singapore International Photography Festival (Singapore, 2018), Landskrona Foto (Landskrona, 2018), Format Photography Festival (Derby, UK, 2017), Auditorio de Galicia (Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 2017), La Fábrica Gallery (Madrid, Spain, 2016), Fotofestiwal Art_Inkubator (Lódź, Poland, 2016), PHotoEspaña (Madrid, Spain, 2016), Circulation(s) festival (Paris, France, 2016) DOCfield Barcelona festival at Arts Santa Mònica (Spain, 2016), Bitume Photofest (Lecce, Italy, 2016), and MOMus-Thessaloniki Museum of Photography (Greece, 2016). His monographs, ‘The Taste of The Wind’ (2019) and ‘The Observation of Trifles’ (2016), are part of collections in institutions such as Tate Library (UK), Harvard Library (USA), Deck (Singapore), The Library Project (Ireland), Lightbox Photography Library (Taiwan), Reminders Photography Stronghold (RPS) (Japan), Fundación Foto Colectanica (Spain), and Landskrona Museum (Sweden).
www.carlosalba.com
Marcin Kruk (b. 1982) lives and works in Rzeszow, Poland. With a background in Archival and Historical Studies, he currently studies Photography at the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava, Czech Republic. A Fujifilm Poland ambassador, Kruk is also a member of the Archive of Public Protest (A-P-P). His practice revolves around a series of long-term documentary projects.
Arno Brignon (b. 1976) lives and works in Toulouse. With a background as an educator in underprivileged neighbourhoods, he later devoted himself fully to photography, joining the Signatures agency in 2013. Brignon’s work questions the place of man in the world, exploring ideas of territory and memory through a poetic photographic approach. He divides his time between teaching, residency programmes, personal research and assignments for various media outlets. Brignon’s images are regularly exhibited both domestically and internationally, whilst his works is found in a series of private and public collections. Thus far, he has published four books Ancrages, D'après une histoire vraie, La formacion de las olas, and Terre et Territoire #1.
arno-brignon.fr
@arnobrignon
Joana Dionisio (b. 1993) is a Portuguese photographer based in Porto, where she works as a freelancer on various commissioned and personal projects. Having first studied Audiovisual Communication Technologies, she completed an MA in Artistic Photography in 2021. Dionisio has exhibited her work in a range of solo and group exhibitions, whilst she was recently selected for FRESH EYES – a publication showcasing emerging European Photography Talent by GUP Magazine.
Tim Rod is a Swiss artist based in Bern, Switzerland. He studied art education at HKB – Bern University of Applied Sciences (BA, 2018), art history at Bern University (Minor, 2019), photography at Vevey School of Photography (CEPV, ES diploma, 2021) and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Contemporary Arts Practice at HKB – Bern University of Applied Sciences. His work often explores issues related to exile and habitat, rootlessness and rootedness, as well as memory, identity, belonging and travelling. His own roots and family history are one of the central elements of his practice and his research, alongside collective visual culture. While his practice remains strongly rooted in photography, his works often expand into site-specific multimedia installations. His work has been exhibited since 2018 in Switzerland and internationally since 2021. Recent exhibitions include "L’Été sans fin" (Festival Images, Vevey, 2020), "Genesis" (Hackney Downs Studios, London, 2021), Charta Bookfestival (Rome, 2021), Photobook Award Encontros Da Imagem (Braga, Portugal, 2021), and the European Photobook Month (Hongkong, 2022). He has been nominated or shortlisted to several major Swiss and international awards. His project "Don’t forget the Knifish" was awarded the special mention of the near.prize 2021. The same year, he won the vfg Young Talent Award for Photography with the project "À demain inshallah".
Scarlat’s work has been recognised and awarded in several national and international competitions, such as PHotoEspaña, the Emerging Photographer Fund (Magnum Foundation), World Nomads, Promoción del Arte at Tabacalera Cantera, Visa pour l’image, Matera European Photography, Artistas Novos, and Creación Injuve. In 2021 he received a bookmaking scholarship at Magnum Photos. This year he also has received a long-term mentorship scholarship at Magnum Photos, and he is currently working with Gregory Halpern and Alessandra Sanguinetti for this project.
Scarlat has always been interested in working with his family from Romania. After leaving in 2005 at the age of 11 and having spent 15 years away, his relationship with them has changed. In his projects, he like to insist on those tensions and conflicts that have arisen as a result of moving to Spain. He is interested in Eastern Europe, Romania, alcoholics, his mother, religion, death, the traces of communism on people's faces, gypsies, children, the cemetery, the lake, wedding dresses, unmarried women, dead girls in wedding dresses, dead horses, boys playing soccer, abandoned dogs, funerals, weddings, enchantments, women who are going to clean the graves in the cemetery, flowers, gold…
The work of Thomas Nolf examines the ways in which national myths are formed, instrumentalised and frequently suppressed. Confounding fiction and documentary, fabled event and scientific enigma, his work looks into how nation-building ideology influences modes of storytelling, and vice versa. Nolf handles his subjects with a close appreciation of narrative and its ambiguous relationship with veracity and considers the ways in which heritage and eroded beliefs can be re-established and repurposed.
For his long-term project Peculiar Artefacts in Bosnia and Herzegovina - an imaginary exhibition, for example, Nolf’s point of departure was the so-called “Bosnian pyramids” and other disputed historical sites and artefacts, including stone spheres and medieval monuments. Juxtaposing his own documentary work with kitschy acrylic paintings of dream-like, bucolic landscapes and an assortment of found photographic footage —including shots of a triangular mountain looming over a scenic village and a shepherd carrying a sheep on his back — Nolf keeps adding elements to our already confused reading of the phenomenon, its emergence and reception. By doing so, he revives the public controversy over the existence of an ancient civilisation in the region.
Drawing on the mythological dimension of the triangle-shaped hills, Nolf proposed an exhibition that would exploit the stories and objects surrounding the “Bosnian pyramids” to the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which, in 2012, had temporarily closed its doors due to a lack of state funds. If myths and legends have proven to be valuable assets in branding a particular place as a unique tourist experience, its effectiveness in generating local informal economies might as well be explored.
Even if Nolf’s project-based practice is driven by a pragmatic desire to formulate alternatives to the status quo, he poetically engages with particular sites and times, carefully tending to a range of subjects — from the promise of a desirable ancient past to the current funding realities devastating cultural institutions in post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina — while, at the same time commenting on photography's rhetorical qualities and its — at times deceptive — relationship to representation and truth-telling.
Text by Laura Herman
His main interest is the correspondence of the photographic medium and perception. He uses the camera as an extension of the human sight and tries to examine the concept of reality and knowledge. He mostly works in the studio environment and seeks to unfold his ideas in a progressive form.
His works were shown at exhibitions at home and abroad. He won the ON_AWARD grand prize of the OFF_Festival Bratislava Contemporary Photography Festival as a member of a group exhibition in 2014. He won the National Scholarship of Hungary in 2015–2016 and the Association of Hungarian Photographers: Photography Scholarship for 2017. He is a member of the Hungarian Photographers’ Association and Studio of Young Photographers. Biró is represented by Trapéz Gallery, Budapest.
http://www.birodavid.com
Panagiotis Papoutsis studied photography, business administration and has a master’s degree in Cultural Management with specialisation in Photography Festivals. He has co-founded the Photometria International Photography Festival. As a photographer and manager of culture, he has organized numerous cultural events and photo exhibitions in Europe and has been invited to give lectures and view portfolios at several European photo festivals.