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.

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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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Masha Weisberg (b. 1997, Ukraine) is a visual artist currently based in Vancouver, Canada. Working primarily with photography—ranging from historical and alternative processes to experimental and mixed-media approaches—Weisberg explores themes of generational trauma, cycles of human history, motherhood, and the complex relationship between personal and collective memory. Her practice blends abstract and narrative-driven imagery, engaging with photography as a medium beyond documentation, often intersecting with installation and video art. Her ongoing projects investigate inherited histories, war trauma, and the fragility of human experience.

Daria is a lens-based artist currently living and working between Kyiv and Paris. Originally from Odesa, Ukraine, Daria came to France to pursue an M.A. in Photography & Video at École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs of Paris, graduating in 2023.
In her artistic practice, Daria explores the connections between past and present, focusing primarily on the youth and cultural, social and political contexts in which young people live.
Her work was exhibited across Europe and the U.S., including La Villette (Paris), Open Eye Gallery (Liverpool), Hangar (Brussels), Mystetskiy Arsenal (Kyiv), The Gallery at Dobbin Mews (New York). Daria is a finalist of the 39th Hyères festival (2024), Palm* Phot Prize (2022) and a recipient of Beyond the silence grant by Magnum Photos & Odesa Photo Days (2024), as well as a grant for contemporary documentary photography from CNAP.

Marija Mandić (b. 1990, Novi Sad, Serbia) is an artist whose practice spans photography, text, drawing, and found footage. Her work delves into the themes of identity, memory and the past, often within a familial context, blending personal narratives with broader social issues. In 2023, Mandić was a finalist for the Mangelos Award, part of the Young Visual Artists Awards network. She won the Fotograf Magazine (CZ) open call in 2022 and received the VID Foundation for Photography grant in 2021 for her project White Bee. Her accolades also include the Dositeja scholarship, a grant from the Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic, and the Mali Princ Foundation award. Mandić holds a PhD in Visual Communication from the Faculty of Art and Design in Ústí nad Labem, where she lectured from 2015 to 2019.

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Hana Selena Sokolović

Hana Selena Sokolović was born in Vienna in 1999 and grew up in Belgrade. She is a visual artist and researcher working between the Balkans and the Netherlands. Her work has been shown in group exhibitions in the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, some of which are As Water Softens Stones (Royal Academy of Arts, The Hague, 2025), Push, Pull, Shift (Živi Atelje DK, Zagreb, 2025), 00:05:59 (Paradise, The Hague, 2024), and Fragments in Transit (Beetroot Studio, Thessaloniki, 2024). Alongside her artistic practice, she has worked with children in educational and socially engaged settings, an experience that continues to shape her people-centered and collaborative approach to art. Hana holds a BA in Photography and New Media from FAMU in Prague (2021) and an MA in Photography and Society from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (2025). She currently lives and works between Belgrade and The Hague.

Worked as a photojournalist at news agencies and later started to work on the topic of tortures doing a photo project about violence in Ukrainian police (project "TORTURED") and aftermath of it. Then I shift to topic of violence in wide meaning of it making a projects about war in Ukraine (projects "Fragments of War", "Banality of Aggression" and "WHEN THE WAR IS OVER"). At 2022 I finished long-term project about highest point in Ukraine mountain Hoverla, also made a project HOME about human habitat and project HOMO about human self-representation. After the full-scale invasion of Russia in Ukraine start to serve in Ukrainian Army and made a projects about it.

Anton Shebetko (he/him) is a Ukrainian artist, photographer, curator, and writer from Kyiv, currently based in Amsterdam. His practice focuses on LGBTQIA+ experiences in Ukraine, themes of memory, loss of identity, multiplicity of history, and the role that photography and archival materials can play in revealing these stories. Much of his research is dedicated to forgotten and unrecorded queer histories of Ukraine, parts of which were published in his book 'A Very Brief and Subjective Queer History of Ukraine'.
His work has been exhibited internationally, including at FOAM Museum (Amsterdam), Schwules Museum and nGbK am Alex (Berlin), Q21 (Vienna), Photo Elysée (Lausanne), CENTQUATRE-PARIS, BWA Studio (Wroclaw), Württembergischer Kunstverein (Stuttgart), and PinchukArtCentre and Mystetskyi Arsenal (Kyiv). He participated in the Kyiv Biennial (2023) and was a nominee for the PinchukArtPrize (2025). Shebetko has curated exhibitions and film programs for Schwules Museum, Melkweg Expo, and WORM Rotterdam, and has lectured at Maastricht University, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, and Between Bridges Gallery. He holds a BA from Gerrit Rietveld Academie.

Portrait of Anton Shebetko by James Barnett

Davide Degano is a visual artist whose practice explores how images shape memory, identity, and collective imagination. Rejecting photography as neutral documentation, he approaches it as a site of tension between reality and fiction, visibility and erasure, questioning what is remembered and what is silenced. His work challenges conventional documentary practice through a multidisciplinary approach that combines classical image-making with experimental strategies, opening space for counter-narratives. He holds a BA in Visual Arts from the Royal Academy of Art (KABK), The Hague, where he received an honourable mention for the Paul Schuitema Award, and an MA in Photography from KASK – Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Ghent, where his graduation project was awarded the Fonds Roger De Conynck Prize.

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Researcher

Aline Bovard Rudaz

Aline Bovard Rudaz is a Swiss photographer based in Geneva. She studied photography at the CEPV (Centre d’enseignement professionnel de Vevey). Through her artistic practice, she sees images as witnesses capable of conveying the concerns of her generation. For her, photography is a sensitive means of tackling the social, intimate and taboo issues of our society. She is particularly interested in forgotten histories, especially those relating to women's lives.

Visual Artist

Researcher

Julius Thissen

Julius Thissen (1993, the Netherlands) lives and works in Arnhem, NL. Their work investigates themes of community and representation, masculinity, sports, and competition. Originating from their background as a performance artist, Thissen's photographic practice aims to create narratives that explore the fine line between performing and failing. These themes are closely tied to contemporary performance-driven culture and the influence of societal expectations on behavior. Their work is deeply rooted in personal experiences as a genderqueer and transmasculine individual. Thissen strongly opposes the restrictive and often binary narratives imposed on transgender and queer individuals.

Thissen has been nominated for the Hendrik Valk Prize, Arnhemse Nieuwe, and the Warsteiner Blooom Awards. In 2023, they received the Artist Basis Fund and, more recently, a Mondriaan Fund Artist Project Grant for their new project Bones of Graphene, Skin of Kevlar.

Dev Dhunsi (b. 1996) is a multimedia artist working at the intersection of photography, textiles, and installation. Utilizing water and movement as central elements in his projects, he creates works that invite reflection on complex themes such as identity, belonging, migration, social justice, and injustice. Through his art, Dhunsi provides space for stories that are often overlooked or suppressed, illustrating how historical, cultural, and political forces shape our lives and experiences. Addressing global issues like migration and colonialism as well as personal experiences of loss and belonging, he creates works that connect past and present, diverse geographies, and identities. His work encourages viewers to reflect on how we understand and relate to the world around us as he simultaneously look at the world through a lens of queer theories and diasporic gaze. Recent exhibitions include: Fotogalleriet (Oslo; NO), MELK (Oslo; NO), Kunstnernes Hus (Oslo; NO), Andrehn-Shiptjenko (SE; Stockholm), Nitja Centre for Contemporary Art (Lillestrøm; NO)

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Emese Bíborka Szakács

Emese Bíborka Szakács studied at the Institute of Communication and Media Studies at Pázmány Péter Catholic University. She is currently pursuing a degree in Art History at the University of Pécs.
Her interests focus on the past and present of experimental photography, as well as the cultural role of new media. As a staff member of the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center, she is involved in organizing international exhibitions and professional programs. She also works as a curator and writer within the frameworks of the Studio of Young Photographers (FFS) and the Studio of Young Artists’ Association (FKSE), contributing to the professional development and realization of several exhibitions in recent years.

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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.

Danaé Panchaud

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.

Iveta Gabalina

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.

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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