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.

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Each year every member of the FUTURES European Photography Platform nominates a set of artists and projects to become part of the FUTURES network.

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Sarah Mei Herman holds a BA in Photography from The Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, and an MA in Fine Art Photography from London’s Royal College of Art. Her personal projects explore relationships, intimacy, loneliness, longing, and the human urge for physical proximity, often focusing on the vulnerability of transitory life stages. Her work has been exhibited internationally, at institutions and festivals such as The National Portrait Gallery, London; The Benaki Museum, Athens; Photo Elysée, Lausanne; Le Château d’Eau, Toulouse; The Jewish History Museum, Amsterdam; and the JIMEI x ARLES International Photo Festival, Xiamen. Her projects have been recognised by a range of prizes and awards, including the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize, the Hyères Festival of Fashion and Photography and the Arnold Newman Prize For New Directions in Photographic Portraiture. Her work is found in several public and private art collections, whilst her images have been published by the likes of iD, Vogue Italia, Foam Magazine, Paper Journal and Dear Dave. Herman’s second photo book – Julian & Jonathan – was recently published by the London-based GOST Books. Future 2025 exhibitions include solo shows at Concertgebouw Brugge in Belgium, and at GLAZ festival in Rennes, France.

Laura Paloma (*1995) is an artist and writer based in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland. Her practice questions the relationship between image, object, text, language, and play online. She is interested in the détournement and misuse of corporate social media platforms, as well as the negotiations that take place between the user and the platform. She works with DIY, lo-fi, and self-publishing techniques, as well as with found or recycled physical and digital materials. Her projects address ideas of authorship, materiality, and performativity of digital and networked images and texts. Context-based and site-specific, her practice explores various formats, ranging from installations to online and print publications, as well as long-duration social media performances. 
She has exhibited her work in several off-spaces in Switzerland, made a live desktop performance for Screen Walks (Photographers’ Gallery London & Fotomuseum Winterthur), was nominated for Prix Photoforum 2023, and has published a zine with Edition Taberna Kritika, Bern. In 2024 she was artist-in-residence at hangar.org in Barcelona and house guest at Literarisches Colloquium Berlin.
She holds a Master’s in Contemporary Arts Practice in Literary Writing from Bern Academy of the Arts, where she worked as assistant from 2021 to 2023.

Photographer

Visual Artist

Zoé Aubry

Zoé Aubry (1993) develops a practice of critical, feminist, and experimental visual research through photography, within installations that unfold in space. Her work aims to reveal the mechanisms of visibility, and invisibility of dominant media narratives, notably through the use of poor images, inverting the logics of the attention economy. Holder of a Bachelor’s degree in Photography from ECAL - École cantonale d’art de Lausanne and a Master’s degree in Contemporary Artistic Practices from HEAD - Haute école d’art et de design de Genève, her book #Ingrid (2022), co-published by RVBBOOKS and Gato Negro Ediciones, was shortlisted for the Autor Book Award at the Rencontres d’Arles and won the Most Beautiful Swiss Books award. Her work has been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions, including « The Lure of the Image » at Fotomuseum Winterthur, «LES RESISTANTES» in Paris, « Concerned » at the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum, at the Musée des beaux-arts du Locle or in Arles, and several festivals including Athens Photo Festival, Biennale de l’image tangible Paris, Guernsey Photography Festival or Les Rencontres de la Photographie de Marrakech. She was the laureate of the Photographic Survey of the City of Geneva in 2021, and of the Swiss Federal Design Awards in 2018. Converging or in parallel, she fights within collective and associative projects and co-founds several initiatives where cultural work and political commitment meet to militate both towards utopias and direct field perspectives.

ROXANA RIOS *1994 (they/them) currently based in Leipzig, Germany.In 2017 Roxana picked up a double study at HGB Leipzig and AdBK Nuremberg and studied in the classes of Heidi Specker and Juergen Teller. After graduating in 2020 Roxana joined Isabel Lewis' class of the performing Arts.They received their Diploma in July 2023. Roxana's work has been shown at Museum Folkwang Essen, DEICHTORHALLEN Hamburg, Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig, Fotomuseum Winterthur and FOTOHOF Salzburg. Roxana was nominated for the Federal Prize for Art Students in 2020 and won the Contemporary German Photography Grant in 2024 ࿐ Roxana's current practice engages in critical discussions concerning the development of (hegemonial) narratives, as well as the relations between image- and knowledge-production. Roxana examines ‘the’ body as a construct, material and representative within social orders. In this function, the work understands itself as an exercise in utopian thinking, seeing and speaking – a contribution to contemporary, social and aesthetic discourses.

Photographer

Tashiya de Mel

Tashiya de Mel is a photographer, environmental advocate, and communications specialist from Colombo, Sri Lanka who uses visual storytelling to create narratives that drive social change.

Her practice explores the nature and possibilities of documentary image-making and deals with themes such as colonial histories, representation, heritage, family, landscapes, and the climate crisis.

Tashiya is driven by a curiosity to forge connections with diverse disciplines such as art, history, academia and the environment. And find ways of bridging these disciplines through different forms of image-based media.

She was the recipient of the Visura grants for freelance visual journalists in 2023 for her project ‘Great Sandy River’ and received the Stroom talent award in 2024. Tashiya is a recent graduate of the ‘Photography and Society’ masters programme at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague (NL). She is based between Colombo and the Hague.

Photographer

Matthieu

Matthieu Croizier (b. 1994) is a Franco-Swiss photographer working between Lausanne and Paris. His work focuses on the intimate, queer issues, portraiture and the representation of the human body. Using fragments of reality that he decontextualises, he attempts to create new stories, like parallel realities in which things and bodies are no longer condemned to be as they are defined. In 2021 he was named British Journal of Photography's Ones to Watch 2021, and selected among the Futures Talents 2021. Also a laureate of Paris Photo's Carte Blanche Students 2020. He recently exhibited at institutions such as Kunsthalle Trier, the Centre d’Art Contemporain Yverdon-les-Bains, and the Swiss Design Awards 2023. His work has been featured in numerous group shows and festivals including in Athens, Milan, Paris, London, Braga, and Guadalajara. In March 2024, he published his first book, "Everything goes dark a little further down" with Mörel Books. Beyond his personal projects, he undertakes commissions for clients comprising M le Monde, Esquire Italy, Zeit Magazine, Art Basel, On Running, Salomon, and Les Inrockuptibles.

Zoe is a photographer from Co. Antrim, now living in Edinburgh. Zoe is interested in the relationship between humans and the environment, as well as the systems of classification that we use to make sense of the world around us. She works on long term photographic projects, drawing on scientific and historic research as well as lived experience to tell a story about a place or subject. Her background research has been informed by photography’s history as a tool of imperialism and this is something that she works to recognise and subvert within her photographic practice. She currently teaches on the Stills School, an alternative education programme for young people and is a visiting lecturer at Queen Margaret University. She has received funding from Edinburgh City Council and the Richard & Siobhan Coward Foundation and was recently included in Fantasy Island, a publication documenting the last 50 years of photography in Ireland. Zoe participated in PhotoIreland's New Irish Works III between 2019 and 2021.

Angeniet Berkers (1985) is a documentary photographer and educator based in Rotterdam. She holds a BA Degree in Social Work and Photography (KABK The Hague). She previously worked as a sociotherapist, counseling veterans and refugees with complex PTSD. Her background in mental health care is evident in her choice of subjects, approach, and working methods. Her long-term projects explore the intersections of history, trauma, and family, revealing how personal and collective memories shape and influence our present. Through extensive research and a blend of visual languages, archival materials, text, and sound, she translates complex stories into an accessible and empathetic whole. Her project Lebensborn was shortlisted for the Aperture Paris Photo First Book Award and the Historical Book Award at Luma Rencontres d'Arles. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Katalog Journal, de Volkskrant, and NRC.

Photographer

Visual Artist

Éva

Éva Szombat is a photographer based in Budapest, Hungary. She earned her MA in photography from Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME), and studied visual communication at ESAG Penninghen in Paris. Her works explore themes of happiness, mental well-being, and self-acceptance, by using colorful visuals with a subtle political edge. She previously released two books on the subject: Happiness, and Practitioners. The series I Want Orgasms, Not Roses won the Robert Capa Grand Prize in 2021, later published by Kehrer Verlag in collaboration with Everybody Needs Art in 2022. In 2023 the book was a joint winner at Belfast Photo Festival Photo-Book Award. Her project about nostalgia, titled Echo in Delirium, was completed late in 2024, and was released also in book form in cooperation with Symposion and Everybody Needs Art. Her works were displayed in numerous festivals and exhibitions such as Unseen Amsterdam, 212 Photography Istanbul, Belfast Photo Festival, White Box (New York), Jerusalem Biennale, Imago Lisboa, Foto Wien, Krinzinger Schottenfeld (Vienna), Galleri Image (Aarhus), Fotografica Bogota, National Museum Warsaw, Münchner Künstlerhaus, Robert Capa Center. She was selected for the FUTURES Photography talent programme in 2018. She is currently attending doctoral school and teaching photography at MOME. She is represented by Longtermhandstand.

Photographer

Designer

Samira Gollin

Samira Gollin (1998) is a graphic designer and freelancing artist based in Bern, Switzerland. She graduated in 2023 with a BA in Visual Communication studies from HKB Bern. For her Bachelor thesis she took part in an artist residency in Fivizzano, a small town in the northern part of Italy, where dozens of stone menhirs exist. From her research concerning the mythical origins and stories of the stones the literary-visual work “Leave no stone unturned” was published.Samira Gollin’s artistic interests are focused on the interaction of humanity and its environment. Her work regularly concerns itself with how humans perceive reality and how perception and individual identities shape narrative and thought.In this publication she examines the authenticity and narrative story telling of historical-documentary media and its effects and affects on the audience. Throughout the work fictional aspects generated by AI are present, without them being identified.Together with artist Aarabi Kugabalan she founded the art collective "Kunst Kola". Kunst Kola is a platform for showcasing local art and cultural works. In 2023 they won the "Kulturpreis Langenthal". Their current collaborative work is about how identities are affected by displacement and war.

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Salvatore Vitale

Salvatore Vitale (b. 1986, Palermo, Italy) is a Swiss-based artist, director, and professor whose work explores the complexity of contemporary societies. Using expanded and speculative storytelling through mixed media techniques, he focuses on the politics of systems that regulate modernity and the impact of technological transformations. Vitale is the Artistic Director of EXPOSED Torino Foto Festival and FUTURES Photography, both international platforms dedicated to contemporary photography. He also serves as a Professor at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, where he leads the Transmedia Storytelling Programme. Previously, he was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of YET magazine, an international photography publication. Vitale’s work has received international awards. It is featured in several public and private collections and has been widely exhibited in museums and at festivals worldwide.

Emese Mucsi

Emese Mucsi is a Hungarian-born curator, and art critic. Emese curates exhibitions where photography is interpreted in the context of contemporary art and works with artists who have an expanded idea of photography and produce photo-based works. Her projects bring together artists and photographers with photojournalists, writers, editors, and other thinkers to experiment with new approaches to photography. She graduated from the Faculty of Contemporary Art Theory and Curatorial Studies at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in 2013, and from the Faculty of Hungarian Literature and Linguistics at the University of Szeged in 2017. She is a member of the curators’ collective BÜRO imaginaire since 2012. Since 2013, she ran projects as a freelance curator. From 2014 to 2018, she was the Editor-in-Chief of Artmagazin Online. Emese is a curator of the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center, Budapest since 2018. She is the member of Global Photographies Network since 2020. She founded DOXA exhibition space and editorial den in 2022. She is doing her PhD in the Film, Media, and Contemporary Culture PhD program at Eötvös Loránd University. Emese is a guest lecturer at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (2023) and the University of Szeged (2024).

Angel Luis Gonzalez Fernandez

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.

Julia Gelezova

Julia Gelezova is a Cultural Producer and Curator, specialising in contemporary lens-based practices. She is General and Project Manager for PhotoIreland, producing events throughout the year like the annual PhotoIreland Festival and Critical Academy, while collaborating on ambitious projects like Creative Europe Photography Platforms—Parallel and Futures. Julia is co-editor of OVER Journal: The Critical Journal of Photography and Visual Culture for the 21st Century. In 2024, she has founded vicinities.network - a peer network for Visual Arts curators and professionals based in Ireland. She has ample experience in producing exhibitions and events, including curatorial work and project management, has vast and successful experience in personal and collective application writing for bodies like the Arts Council of Ireland and local councils. She has participated in portfolio reviews, acted as visiting lecturer, and also worked in an editorial capacity and translation for artists and other arts professionals, including work for The Routledge Guide to Photography and Visual Culture. Most recently, she curated the 2021 edition of PhotoIreland Festival and was the Centre Culturel Irlandais cultural producer resident 2022. She is a member of the AICA International Association of Art Critics.

Danaé

Danaé Panchaud is a Swiss exhibition curator, museologist and lecturer specialising in photography. She has been the director of the Centre de la photographie Genève since 2022, after serving from 2018 to 2021 as director and curator of the Photoforum Pasquart in Biel, Switzerland. She trained in photography at the Vevey School of Photography before completing a bachelor’s degree in visual arts with a specialisation in curatorial practices at Geneva University of Art and Design. She later studied museology at Birkbeck, University of London, earning a master’s degree in 2017. She has held positions in several Swiss institutions in the fields of contemporary art, design and science, including the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, where she was a research associate from 2007 to 2012, the Gallery SAKS in Geneva in 2012-2013, the Fondation Verdan in Lausanne as scientific collaborator, and the mudac in Lausanne, where she was in charge of the public relations from 2012 to 2017. As a free-lance curator, she has curated exhibitions for several Swiss and international museums, independent spaces and galleries since 2012. She regularly writes texts for monographs of contemporary artists, exhibition catalogues, and thematic publications such as Flora Photographica, co-authored with William Ewing and published by Thames & Hudson in 2022. She was a lecturer at the Vevey School of Photography from 2014 to 2018, and regularly lectures at art and photography schools in Switzerland. In 2023, she joined the teaching faculty of the CAS in Theory and History of Photography at University of Zurich.

Sebastian Vaida

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.

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