Matej Jurčević graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts (KASKA), Antwerp in 2021 with a MA in Photography. In his artistic practice he explores themes of identity, collective memory and youth culture. Due to personal mental health struggles he works towards destigmatisation of mental illness. He is a recipient of the VID Grant award for 2021 hosted by the VID Foundation for Photography. The award is granted to photographers exploring relevant social issues in the Balkans. In 2022 he published his first photobook: I try to take care of myself now. The book was published by Organ Vida Publishing.
https://matejjurcevic.com/
Giya Makondo-Wills is a British-South African documentary photographer. Makondo-Wills is concerned with identity, race, colonisation, the western gaze and systems of power. Her practice continues to develop and pushes to engage and collaborate with marginalised communities. She holds a BA (hons) and a MA in Documentary Photography from the University of South Wales (formerly Newport). In 2021 she began teaching on the BA Photography at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK). She lives and works between the U.K and The Netherlands. She also works with other educational institutions as a visiting lecturer. She has exhibited her work internationally, some highlights include; Lagos, Johannesburg, Dusseldorf, Milan and Paris as well as widely within the UK. Featured in several ‘graduate of the year’ profiles, she has won an IFOR documentary photography award and been shortlisted for other prizes.She was nominated for the 2019 World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass and in 2018 selected as one of the '31 women to watch out for' by the British Journal of Photography. Her work has been published in the British Journal of Photography, Royal Photographic Society journal, It’sNiceThat, Unseen Magazine and Source Photographic Review, amongst others. Her first photobook was released in 2020 They Came From The Water While The World Watched is available via the Lost Light Recordings. In 2022-2023, Makondo-Wills is commissioned by FOTODOK to produce the body of work about Utrecht communities, with which she will partake in a group exhibition opening FOTODOK at the new location of De Machinerie.
In 2016 she published her first photo book, eden, thanks to the Fiebre Dummy Award. Since 2010 she lives in Madrid, alternating her work as a photographer with her personal projects.
In 2016 her book "The Modern Spirit Is Vivisective” won the ViennaPhotoBookAward. Her work has been presented and exhibited internationally, including Plat(t)form 2017, Fotomuseum Winterthur; Fotografia Europea, Reggio Emilia; Benaki Museum, Athens; Noorderlicht Photofestival, Groningen; Emerging Talents, MACRO Factory, Rome; Festival Circulations, CENTQUATRE-PARIS, Paris; and Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome.
Her latest work Petrus, published by Kehrer Verlag, reflects on a certain rhetoric of masculinity in Western culture. Through a cynical, tender and arbitrary analysis of what probably cannot be sliced and diced Francesca Catastini plays with archetypes and images considering the way they sculpt ourselves and shape our views. Looking for subtle discrepancies her images go beyond their figurative meaning in order to activate new analogies and connotations.
http://francescacatastini.it/
Ilavenil Vasuky Jayapalan (b. 1991) is a transdisciplinary artist based in Oslo, Norway. Exploring mechanisms of national consciousness; notions of freedom, truth and desire; and speculative futures that draw from the fringes of society, Jayaplan’s works are heavily inspired by worlds of cinema, music and media. A longtime collaborator of artists like M.I.A, Christopher Kulendran Thomas and Annika Kuhlmann, his collaborative works have been shown at a host of international music festivals – from London’s ICA to Berlin’s KW Institute for Contemporary Art. His personal work, meanwhile, has been exhibited in several Norwegian institutions, and at Tokyo’s Sezon Art Gallery.
Suzette Bousema graduated from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (NL) in 2019. She exhibited at a.o. museum Singer Laren (NL), Foam (NL), Art Rotterdam (NL), Photoville (NY), Fotobok Festival Oslo (NO), COP 25 (ES) and The Scientific Center Kuwait (KW). Her work has been published in a.o. NRC (NL), de Volkskrant (NL), Foam magazine (NL), Harper’s Bazaar (NL), Financial Times (UK), Der Spiegel (DE), Die Zeit (DE) and Liberatión (FR).
Vassilis Pantelidis’ images provide a glimpse of an alternative reality, which consists of a series of conceptual self - portraits. The individual scenes adopt a theatrical approach where the abstraction, the paradox and the absurd as well as the repetitive weave and the claustrophobic thread around the human subject, without any sort of redemption or solution.
Erola Arcalís (Menorca, 1986) graduated from MA Photography at the Royal College of Art (2017) and is currently based in London. Recent exhibitions include: Rehearsing the Real, Peckham24, London, May 2019; Paisajes Esenciales, JustLX, Lisbon, May 2019; A Corner With Erola Arcalís, solo, A Corner With, London, May 2018.
Arcalís uses the lyricism of the black and white photograph to create fictional narratives that navigate between the stage and the encountered. Her practice combines abstract landscapes and sculptural still life to generate different voices. Arcalís’ images are inspired or make use of poetic text to construct fictions that revolve around myth, dream and personal experience. Central to her process is the materiality of the large format analogue print and the slowness of the 5x4 camera.
She is the author of many self-published photographic zines such as "Utopia", "Published" and "Underground". Creating zines gives her the opportunity to reinterpret existing material and create a new full-fledged work with its own meaning. She has presented her work in Belgrade, Budapest, Tel Aviv, Zagreb and Paris. In 2020, she won first place at Slovak Press Photo and the Young Talent of the Year award for her documentary series about the community called Utopia. In 2023, she placed first in the Rovinj Photo Days festival with her series of photographs about the Bratislava community. She received her bachelor's degree from the Department of Photography and New Media at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava in the studio of Olja Triaška Stefanović and Jana Hojstričová. She spent a semester in Finland at the Department of Documentary Photography in Lahti. She is a recent graduate of the Master's degree at FAMU in Prague.
Nolwenn Brod is a French artist based in Paris. She has studied humanities and social sciences, and trained in photography in London and at the Ecole des Gobelins in Paris. She is a member of the Vu Agency and represented by the eponymous gallery in Paris since 2016.
She develops her projects most often in the context of creative residencies in France and Europe where she mixes photography and video; and responds to commissions for the press and institutions. Her works are regularly exhibited in France and Europe and are included in the collections of the Bnf (French National Library), the Cnap, the Nicéphore Niépce Museum, the Museum of Brittany, the Villa Noailles, the Agnès b. collection, the Neuflize OBC Foundation, art libraries and private collections.
Her first book was published by Poursuite Editions in 2015, the second is in preparation.
During Photo London in 2018, They were my landscape (MACK) was launched.
Kiely was nominated for the Paul Huf Award, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award and selected to be in the British Journal of Photography Ones to Watch, Talent issue (2018).
My name is Oscar Scott Carl, i’m 26 years old. I finished my bachelor programme in photojournalism in April 2021 at DMJX in Aarhus, Denmark. Photography is for me an exploration of the question why? Through photography I try to understand and comprehend. I believe that my pictures are visual footsteps in my search for understanding of the constant transitions in life. I document transitions to comprehend. I often find myself capturing quiet intimate moments in both human relations and on my own. I do not necessarily feel the need to shout, but I do believe in photography as an important part of understanding the world around us.
Tina Farifteh is a Dutch-Iranian artist based in The Netherlands. She obtained master’s degrees in Economics and a bachelor’s degree in Arts. Thanks to this academic and cultural background, she is used to seeing the world from different angles.
She is a visual researcher whose work lies at the intersection between arts, politics and philosophy. Her interest lies in human nature and the politicization of ‘life’ – particularly, the administration and control of life. She is inspired by the work of philosophers Agamben, Foucault and Arendt. Specifically their concepts of ‘bare life’ and ‘biopolitics’.
In her work, she reflects on the impact of man-made power structures such as nation states and corporations on the lives of ordinary people. Often focusing on people stuck between the ‘natural’ life and the ‘conventional’ life. People not only excluded from the privileges granted by the ruling political and economic systems, but often damaged by these to make the system ‘work’. Her photographic approach is research-based and conceptual. Often combining images, text and data. The goal is to seduce us to look at topics that we prefer to look away from because of their complexity or discomfort.
In her earlier project Killer Skies (2018), she explored the impact of the ‘dronisation’ of armies. Currently she is researching and reflecting on the situation of refugees on the move or stuck at European borders. This work focuses on borders, bodies, and the political language used to normalize the absurdity of how we are currently dealing with these topics.
János R. Szabó (1992) was born and raised in Kömörő, a small village in the northeastern part of Hungary. This particular locale plays a major role in his inspiration as an artist.He completed her BA photography studies at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in 2018. He has been an active creator of the underground cultural segment of Budapest since 2018. Beyond his regular practice as a photographer he is in strong collaboration with the performance art scene of Budapest as performer and art director. He is invested in sociophoto and depiction of people, researching the patterns of human personalities, and the connection between memory and documentation.
For her photographic adventure I am just a scenic spot, Pauline Niks made two long journeys to China, travelling the entire country to photograph so-called landmarks. Her particular focus was on replicas of iconic tourist attractions from other countries, such as the Eiffel Tower and the White House. The idea behind the undertaking was the manipulative nature of documentary photography: it is often seen as a reliable reproduction of reality when in fact it creates its own reality.
www.paulineniks.com
Giulia Vanelli (b.1996) is an Italian photographer based in Tuscany whose work explore concepts such us memory and identity, always driven by an evocative approach. She uses symbols as a causal link between visible and invisible, capturing the most enigmatic and hidden aspect of reality. She graduated from the BA Photography at Libera Accademia di Belle Arti of Florence in 2019 after spending a schooling period at Stephen F. Austin University, Texas. In 2020 she was selected for the artistic residency at Fabrica, Benetton’s communication research center. In 2023 she was selected by the British Journal of Photography as one of the fifteen most promising emerging photographers from all over the world. Her work has been shown in group and solo exhibition in international festivals and galleries, including Fotografia Europea (Reggio Emilia, 2021), Galerie Joseph Le Palais (Paris, 2022) and 1014 Gallery (London, 2022). In 2024 her first book The Season has been published by Witty Books.