Gonçalo C. Silva (b. 1997) lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal. He has studied at both the Faculty of Fine-Arts in Lisbon and at Atelier de Lisboa, and is currently pursuing an MA at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities from NOVA University of Lisbon. In his work, which applies an artistic approach to photography, Silva addresses themes related to the representation of the landscape, and to the relationship between humans and nature. In his projects, the interconnection of images from different contexts creates new meanings and narratives with a strong symbolic character, related to the artist’s personal experiences.
In 2020, her work was shortlisted for the Prix Elysée and the Galicia Contemporary Photography Award. She also was a winner of the Fine Arts and Photography grant given by the Spanish Ministry of Culture and nominated at the Swiss Design Awards, amongst other recognitions.
She has exhibited in places such as Wilde Gallery (Geneva), Images Vevey, Verzasca Photo (Switzerland), Galería C19 (Ibiza), Galería Serendipia, Galería OTR (Madrid) and others.
Her book “Aya” published by RM (in conjunction with Yann Gross) has been recognized as one of the best books of 2020 by institutions such as PhotoEspaña or the Lucie Foundation (NY).
Prominent media like Aperture Magazine, El País, Fisheye, Gup, Le Temps, Liberation, Vogue Italia and Vistprojects have published her work.
Marta Machado is a Portuguese-Cape Verdean artist who lives and works in Braga, Portugal. A graduate of Architecture from the University of Minho, she also holds an MA in Photography from the School of Arts at the Catholic University of Porto. Her photographic work analyses the ambiguities of history and the so-called ‘official’ narratives of the Western world, focusing on themes of colonialism, identity and territory. Machado’s Beyond Solid Ground project was exhibited at Braga’s Encontros da Imagem festival, whilst her Nos Txôn series was presented at Lisbon’s Imago Gallery. Her academic research, meanwhile, has been widely published in peer-reviewed journals.
Giulia Mangione (b.1987) is an Oslo-based visual artist who works with photography, film and writing. She earned a first MA in Comparative Literary Studies from Goldsmiths University of London, and a second MFA in Fine Arts from the Art Academy in Bergen. She also studied Advanced Visual Storytelling at the Danish School of Media and Journalism in Denmark. Her first book Halfway Mountain, published by Journal in 2018, was selected for the Prix du Livre at Les Rencontres d'Arles and nominated for the MACK First Book Award. Mangione’s work has been exhibited at the International Center of Photography, New York; Musée de l’Élysée, Lausanne; Fotoforum, Bolzano; Fotogalleriet, Oslo; and Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen. She is currently part of the 6th round of the Norwegian Journal of Photography.
Instagram: @giulia_mangione
Website: www.giuliamangione.com
Kristina Õllek (b.1989, Estonia) is a visual artist who lives and works in Tallinn, Estonia. She is working in the field of photography, video and installation, with a focus on investigating representational processes, geological and ecological matter, and the human-made environment. In her practice she frequently uses situations when fact and fiction, synthetic and natural, copy and original intertwine with each other and become a hybrid object / matter to obtain new and reconsidered meaning.
Her works are often site-sensitive, analysing the exhibition location and format, questioning modes of presentation and installation politics, viewing it from different perspectives — from a historical museum to online space.
Kristina Õllek has graduated from Estonian Academy of Arts (BA degree in 2013, MA degree in 2016; at the Photography Department, Fine Arts). She has also studied at Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam (2016) and Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee (2012). She’s been the laureate of the Estonian Academy of Arts Young Artist Prize 2013 (BA) and 2016 (MA). In 2019 she received the Art Proof Production Grant. Her works have recently been shown in various international group and solo exhibitions in Estonia and abroad. Her works can be found in private and public collections.
www.kristinaollek.com
Irene Zottola is a self-taught photographer; in 2016, she began honing her skills in the laboratory of Madrid’s Slow Photo collective. Her poetic works probe at the limits of analogue photography, which she often pairs with text. Working simultaneously as an arts educator, Zottola explores photography as a tool for social intervention amongst vulnerable groups. Her first photobook, Icarus, was published by Ediciones Anómalas in 2021. With the same project, Zottola was a finalist at PhotoEspaña, and at the Photobook Awards of Les Rencontres d'Arles in 2022. Her work has been exhibited in Spain, Italy and Morocco.
Corso began working as a documentary photographer in 2011, publishing in media outlets like National Geographic, Al Jazeera, TIME Lightbox, GEO magazine, MO, Il Reportage, VICE, El País, and or Revista 5W. Among the cultural centers that have hosted and exhibited his projects, the following stand out: The Cervantes Institute in New York, the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts, Palau Robert (Barcelona), Círculo de Bellas Artes (Madrid), the International PHOTON Festival (Valencia), Photo Romania Festival and the LUMIX Festival (Hannover). His work is part of the traveling exhibition "Creadores de Conciencia", curated by Juan Manuel Castro Prieto and Chema Conesa, which compiles the work of 40 authors under the topic "committed photographers".
His documentary work has been recognized by the International PHOTON Festival, BANFF Photo Essay Competition, Prix de la Photographie Paris, Moscow International Foto Awards, International Photography Awards and as a finalist of other contests such DAYS JAPAN Photo Awards, the World Reporter Award, the Contemporary African Photography Prize, the Siena International Photography Awards, the Balkan Photo Awards and the LUMIX festival, among others.
In 2018 he is nominated for the World Press Photo 6x6 Global Talent Program and his project MATAGI received the National Geographic Society Explorer Grant.
www.javiercorso.com
Her work has been shown internationally and was featured in multiple printed and online publications. She was one of the artists selected to be part of Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2019 and was nominated for the Foam Paul Huf Award in 2021.
Her work A Blurry Aftertaste is part of the Government Art Collection and it was published as a book form as part of Paper Journal Annual 2019. In the last few years Eleonora has exhibited in galleries and museums such as L21 Gallery in Palma de Mallorca, South London Gallery and Borough Road Gallery in London, Leeds Art Gallery in Leeds, MAR Ravenna, National Museum of Gdansk, and festivals such as Circulations Festival in Paris and Format Festival in Derby.
She works editorially with The New York Times, The Telegraph, The Financial Times, Port Magazine, among others.
Agostini uses photography, video, performance and sculpture to tell stories that raise questions about the construction of personal identities and behaviours. Her work is strongly connected with the experience of our surroundings and she is interested in exploring how the relationships that we form inform who we are.
Through the study of preconceived structures, whether physical or psychological, Agostini aims to investigate the difficulties of how human experience is constructed and she is interested in finding a possible fracture within our socially constructed rules and the spaces we inhabit. Her work often starts from personal experiences andit is the result of a long process of internalization of memories and experiences that she re-elaborate and recontextualize to give it order and gain control over them. She is interested in the psychological action of reenactment used as a tool to investigate and gain insight into one’s life: re-enacting and re-imagining old memories and past experiences become a way to unfold and observe our personal histories.
Agostini refers to the every-day as a space full of potential and possibilities for quests, incorporating ordinary objects and activities within her images to express and navigate its different layers and meanings.
Kinga Wrona (b. 1983) is a Polish documentary photographer currently living in Krakow. She is a student at the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava, Czech Republic. In her latest projects, Wrona explores the relationship between humans and nature in relation to climate change, natural disasters and environmental degradation. Her images have been published by FOTO Magazine, The Calvert Journal, National Geographic and New York Post, whilst her projects have been exhibited internationally. Her recent 85 project will soon be exhibited at Circulation(s) Festival in Paris, France.
Nikhil Vettukattilb. 1990, Bengaluru, India) is an artist and writer who lives and works in Oslo.
He uses a range of media such as sound, installation, performance, text, sculpture, and video, his practice questions modes of representation and image-making processes related to lived experiences. He has previously exhibited at venues such as Kunsthall Oslo (2022), K-U-K, Trondheim (2021), CAPC, Bordeaux (2021), Art Hub Copenhagen (2021), K4 Galleri, Oslo (2021), Louise Dany, Oslo (2020), EKA Gallery, Tallinn (2020), Kristiansand Kunsthall (2020), and Le Bourgeois, London (2019). Forthcoming exhibitions include Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo, and the National Museum of Norway, both taking place in June 2022. He is a member of Tenthaus and Carrie's art collectives and a part of Atelier Kunstnerforbundet (2021-2023).
Oliver Lantos (b.1992) is a Hungarian photographer currently living and working in Budapest.
His works are mostly long term project, whose starting point are personal experience or a visceral reaction. He is interested in the systematization of his observations and researches, and the process of building these systems.
In his projects, he usually explores the effect of contemporary politics, the LGBTQ community, and the casual relationships between the problems of global social systems and their consequences, as well as their effects on human psyche and nature.
He graduated from the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME) in Budapest, in 2022, before that he studied at the KREA Contemporary Art Institute. Member of the Studio of Young Photographers since 2023. In 2024 he was awarded the József Pécsi Photography Grant.
Peters Jurgis (b. 1991) is a new media artist currently based in Riga, Latvia. He holds both a BSc in Digital Media Technology and an MSc in Cyber Security from the University of Birmingham, and an MA in Audiovisual Arts from the Art Academy of Latvia. His work comprises visual explorations into the impact of various phenomena caused by advances in technology. As such, a main focus of his work is Artificial Intelligence (AI) – both as a medium and on a conceptual basis. New developments in AI have sparked a series of heated debates, ranging from whether we can entrust critical tasks to AI, to conversations on the role of the human creator in an age of AI-generated content. With a background in machine learning algorithms, Jurgis believes that the future will bring AI and human co-creation – where algorithms are used to enhance a human artist’s capabilities. In his own practice, Jurgis applies new technologies as tools for visual storytelling, and as a means to speculate on future scenarios.
Julie Hrnčířová is a photographer based in Oslo. Her long-term interest lies in her sensitivity to the details of the urban environment and the periphery. Observing these neglected places, non-places, urban coincidences and structures reveals the author's interest in a broader social context.
She graduated at Ecole Nationale Supérieure of Photographie (ENSP), Master degree, Arles, France in 2018. She participated in exhibitions as Les Rencontres de la Photographie festival in Arles, the GapGap Gallery in Leipzig, Gallery Fotogalleriet, Oslo , Industria Art, Brno.
https://juliehrncirova.xhbtr.com/everyday_sculpture
Joud Toamah is an interdisciplinary graphic designer and visual researcher based in Antwerp, Belgium. The project 'Archive of Traveling Images, an Image Amidst the Heart' (2018–ongoing) is an archive of digitised images of family albums that the artist sources from acquaintances, friends and family members in Syria and the diaspora. Toamah collects pictures that have undergone processes of scanning, uploading, searching, cutting, pasting, renaming, compressing, downloading, forwarding, etc. As such, she is creating digital archives of private and intimate images. But her research highlights something more interesting than the photographs themselves: the way that this digital circulation within personal networks becomes reflected in the image itself. Digital reproduction and circulation — the conditions of recreating bonds after displacement — leave their traces. In its digital journey of relocation, the image acquires consecutive layers of relationality.
Toamah’s art and research are deeply relatable despite the fact that her archive of travelling images is not publicly accessible. Although she chooses to share only the project’s conditions and context, her approach is poetic rather than analytical. We are invited to see how she secures the invisible, the inaccessible, the untranslatable. The artist’s research suggests that to safeguard one’s humanity, one must retain agency over one’s images — and protect them from the othering gaze. Yet her project moves beyond this aspect: through the recollection of private and personal images, she creates personal bonds based on reciprocity, generosity, care and feedback. Photography becomes an interaction between people, a tool to talk and share. A tool for knowledge production, for telling and retelling, for activating each other’s stories and memories.
The digitised images reveal their unique materiality: the fading of the paper, the despair that one will forget certain places, the writing scribbled on the backs of photographs to remind us across generations and distances that to remember is to relate. Toamah’s research moves beyond the binary oppositions between digital and material, here and there, past and present. She establishes a relational archive and an aesthetics of care: the archive of travelling images creates simultaneously belonging and protection.
- Text by Petra Van Brabandt (.tiff)
Anna Aicher (b. 1993) is a documentary and portrait photographer from Germany. After studying photography in Berlin, she became a team member at Salzburg’s Gallery Fotohof in 2018. She is currently following a Masterclass at Ostkreuzschule, Berlin. Exploring traces of old traditions and rituals in contemporary society, most of Aicher’s projects have an auto-biographical dimension. She travels constantly between the city and the countryside, turning up stories nestled in distinct communities. Besides her personal projects, Aicher regularly works on assignments for various newspapers and magazines.
Website: www.anna-aicher.com
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.
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.
Browsing through Allyssa Heuze’s photographs is, one rapidly remarks, like taking one path and unexpectedly finding oneself on another. A slide leads us to a pair of buttocks encircled by a hoop, a baseball player hits a home run which leads us to two small breasts drawn by the shadowed outline of two plump apples, and even to those gazed upon by another young man, his head submerged beneath a t-shirt. References to play punctuate Allyssa Heuze’s labyrinthine journey between her images: ball games, gymnastics, role play. This photographer’s preferred terrain is the studio, where she seems to take pleasure in constructing her dramas and her absurd scenarios. Herein this white cube willingly yields, where one may make believe that the real, the duration of the photographic shot, has no hold. She invites her friends within, a banana and doughnuts, an erupting volcano, and an aeroplane vulva in an inventory that is all the more burlesque as it is presented through a precise, almost clinical, photographic vocabulary. A balanced light, controlled reflections, a careful composition: together they hold all of the attributes of a style with a perfect appearance that this photographer – who certainly knows all of its rules – takes pleasure in making slip.
Marin Håskjold is an artist and filmmaker based in Oslo, Norway. She studied moving images at Nordland School of Art and Film in Kabelvåg on the Lofoten islands. Identity is a central theme in Håskjolds work, where she philosophically explores different notions of gender and sex in a queer and feminist perspective. Håskjolds work has been exhibited and screened at a number of art institutions and film festivals, such as Tate Modern, London, Bomuldsfabriken Kunsthall, Arendal, Coast Contemporary, Oslo, Kyiv International Short Film Festival, Helsinki International Film Festival, the Norwegian Short Film Festival in Grimstad, Trøndelag Center of Contemporary Art, and Vega Scene, Oslo, as a part of Fotogalleriet’s programme. Her short film «What is a Woman?» (2020) has also been awarded with a Norwegian Academy Award in 2021, the Amanda, for Best Short, and Best Script at Beirut International Women Film Festival.