She works in particular on the question of exoticism and on the family, using in her aesthetics the form of photographic documentary-fiction.
This year, she is one of the photographers selected for the 35th edition of the Hyères Fashion, Photography and Fashion Accessories Festival at Villa Noailles.
She is a student of the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava (the Czech Republic), winner of the PDN Emerging Photographer, last year's laureate of the Konrad Pustoła's Remembrance Scholarship, winner of the Sputnik Photos Project titled "As you can see". Her works have been published e.g. in The Calvert Journal, Culture.pl, FK magazine.
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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/
Dafni Melidou (b. 1990, Greece) is a visual artist whose multidisciplinary practice combines research, photography, writing and multi-media experimentation. Coming from a scientific background her working and research methods are versatile, and she approaches her projects from many angles. She works with her own photographs, found images, tactile materials and smells, often re-appropriated and constructed into new constellations, shapes or forms.
Melidou's experimental works start with her daily encounters of events in the mass media and her personal observations. Her themes center around gender and social injustices, the complexities of representation and our conflicting perception of reality. A common thread in her work is the understanding of materiality and the physical world in a digital age. Her fascination lies with creating non-conclusive and often confusing stories that call for an open interpretation and invite the viewers to re-think dominantmedia narratives.
Melidou holds a B.A. in Chemistry, a M.Sc. in Food Science and she is currently pursuing her Master's degree in Photography & Society at The Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK). In 2021 she co-founded cartographydigest.com, an experimental visual platform aiming to stretch the boundaries of photography and map new territories. She is currently based between Rotterdam and Athens.
His documentary approach uses photography as a link between a habitat and its inhabitants, as well as between the inhabitants themselves. In so doing, he questions notions of territorial, social, architectural and industrial identity.
In 2020, he co-founded La Nombreuse ASBL, a cultural space in Saint-Gilles, Bruxelles dedicated to emerging and contemporary photography. Since 2019, he has been driving a truck transformed into a camera obscura to meet the inhabitants of northern France.
He graduated from the BTS photo de Roubaix (fr) in 2015 and from ESA Le75 in 2018, where he has been teaching since 2023.
The images mainly feature personalities from the world’s nightlife, fashion and art communities. The work is an exploration of queer identity, self-invention and LGTBQI culture informed by a love of high-camp, kitsch aesthetics and art history. They aim to capture both the surface and the interior world of the subject halfway between truth and fantasy. Much as Susan Sontag elucidates in ‘Notes on Camp’, Studio Prokopiou is the lie that tells the truth.
Lisa Bukreyeva (b. 1993) is a photographer based in Kyiv, Ukraine. Since her journey with photography began in 2019, her works have been presented at a range of museums and festivals, including Photo Elysée, Lausanne; Noorderlicht Festival, Groningen; and Deichtorhallen – Internationale Kunst Und Fotographie, Hamburg. Meanwhile, her images have featured in the likes of Der Spiegel, Zeit, The New York Magazine and Blind Magazine. Bukreyeva is a member of the Burn My Eye collective.
She has participated in numerous group shows including reGeneration2: Tomorrow’s Photographers Today presented at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne and the Aperture Foundation in New York. She held several solo exhibitions including Futerał at Wschód Gallery, Sunday Night Drama at Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, Leakage at the Panopticon in Stockholm and at the Discovery Award show at the Rencontres d’Arles 2015. In 2013 she was awarded a scholarship for the PhotoGlobal program at the School of Visual Arts in New York. In 2017 she received the Overseas Photographer Higashikawa Award.
Jan Kazimierz Barnaś – born in Sandomierz on September 12, 1991; currently permanently connected with Lodz. Student at the Faculty of Visual Arts of the Academy of Fine Arts in lodz in the specialty of Photography and Multimedia. In his works, he often takes up the subject of the destruction of the image, his main interest is film and video art. As the FILMMAKER on his account, he has several etudes, video-arts, animations, music videos and feature films.
Wojciech Kamerys – born in 1994, student of the faculty of Photography and Multimedia Communication at the Academy of Fine Arts in lodz. Practice based on photography, combined with other media. Participant of several exhibition in Lodz, Gdynia and Bydgoszcz. Cooperation with Academy of Music in Lodz, and The National Film, Television and Theatre School of Lodz and MS1 in Lodz. Theme of works based in relation between human and architecture, funcion of light and shadow in a classic silver photography.
Josh Kern (*1993), currently based in Leipzig, Germany, graduated with a bachelor's degree in photography at the FH Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts in 2022. Between 2018 and 2021, Josh Kern has published three books: "Räuber" (Eigensinn Publishing), "Love Me" (Eigensinn Publishing), and "Fuck me" (dienacht Publishing).
Helcel received an honorable mention in the European art thesis competition START POINT Prize 2020. He is a co-founder and active member of the theatre group Akolektiv Helmut.
A common thread throughout his practice is an interest in the metaphorical potential of photographs. His project, ‘John’s Notebooks’ (2020-2021), pulls on the symbolism present with the landscape of the home to touch on the emotions and memories connected to the childhood loss of his father. Whereas his most recent work ‘Murmurations’ (2020-21), employs the starling murmuration as a symbol to reflect on the current global crisis and the act of coming together and converging as a group.
Barraclough is a recent graduate of the MA Photography programme at Bristol UWE and is due to exhibit his master’s project, ‘John’s Notebooks’, at the 2021 Bristol Photo Festival.