The
Professional
Sebastian Vaida
Lives and Works in
Cluj-Napoca
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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Sebastian Vaida
was nominated by
Photo Romania Festival
in
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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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Mikkel Hørlyck (b. 1990) is an independent photojournalist and visual artist based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Once a student at Fatamorgana The Danish School of Art Photography, he holds a BA in Photojournalism from the Danish School of Media and Journalism. Hørlyck’s career began as a photojournalist intern at Politiken, a Danish daily broadsheet. His work has since been recognised by a series of prizes – including Danish Picture Of The Year, Vilnius Photo Circle and World Report Award. In 2019, Hørlyck was named Discovery Of The Year at The Lucie Awards in New York.
Claudia Amatruda (1995, Foggia, IT) is a visual artist living and working in Bologna, IT. Her work focuses on the representation of the body through photography, video performances and installations, addressing social issues such as disability and with particular attention to the creative process, supported by research on scientific and literary texts. In 2019 she published the photographic book "Naiade", presented through lectures in Italian schools and festivals to raise awareness on the topic of invisible diseases. From 2021 to the present her project "When you hear hoofbeats think of horses, not zebras" is exhibited in Italy, Greece, France, Holland and England. In 2022 she won the Special Mention for the Emerging Photography section of the Francesco Fabbri Prize. According to Il Giornale dell'Arte she is among the 30 artists under 30 in 2023 and produced NFT works during a PhotoVogue x Voice.com Art Residency. In 2024 she exhibited her project "Good Use of my Bad Health" at the Fotografia Europea Festival in Reggio Emilia, winning the ‘Nuove Traiettorie’ mention of the Luigi Ghirri Prize: an art residency and solo exhibition at the Italian Cultural Institute in Stockholm in May 2025. This year she will release her new photography book published by RVM HUB.
Florian Gatzweiler (*1998) is a German artist whose work deals with identity, violence and images of masculinity. His projects are characterized by an empathetic examination of personal and social issues, which he often explores in a photographic context. He combines documentary approaches with staged elements to create multi-layered and complex narratives in which he attempts to do justice to the themes and problems of his work. During his studies at the Ostkreuzschule für Fotografie, which he completed in 2024 under the direction of Irina Ruppert, he exhibited several times, including at EMOP Berlin and Paris Photo. His awards include a scholarship from the Socio-Culture Fund and the Paris Photo Young Talent Award.
Anna Safiatou Touré (Bamako, Mali, born in 1996) is a Franco-Malian multidisciplinary artist based in Brussels. She graduated from the Nantes Saint-Nazaire School of Fine Arts and the ENSAV La Cambre in photography. Anna Safiatou was awarded the Médiatine Prize in 2022 and the Roger De Conynck Fund in 2023-24.
Her work explores the space that unites or separates the two sides of every migratory narrative. The journey through this personal, historical, and cultural blending fills for her empty or unanswered spaces. On her own scale, she wishes to materialize this absence by creating her own evidence to make history heard—rendering the absence visible to tell stories from these new bodies. Like a certain poetry of emptiness, couldn’t the world be told in reverse, like a stencil, from the edge?
Georgiana Feidi, currently based in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, is a visual artist who
achieved her photo video MA's degree from the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca in 2020. In her artistic approach, she uses both digital and analog tools, including post-processing and the hands-on exploration of darkroom and alternative photography techniques. In her artistic endeavors, Georgiana explores themes inspired by the mysteries of the universe, nature, personal insights and experiences. Her works reflect a journey into unexplored territories, creating visual narratives that transcend conventional boundaries of thought. Over the years, she has presented her work in solo exhibitions nationally, and participated in group shows across Romania and internationally, including cities like Dortmund, Melbourne, New York, and Rome. Her work has also been featured in various online publications both nationally and internationally.
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.
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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.
Catherine Lemblé is a Belgian photographer based in Brussels. She received her MA in photography from Luca School of Arts Brussels. Her work has been exhibited at FOMU (Antwerp), De Brakke Grond (Amsterdam), Contretype (Brussels), Musée de la Photographie (Charleroi) and Helsinki Photo Festival, amongst others. She was selected for .tiff (FOMU, Antwerp) and FUTURES (European Photography Platform) in 2024. Her photographs have been featured in publications such as Stern, De Standaard, and Frankfurter Allgemeine Quarterly. She self-published her first book, Cabin Fever, in 2019. Her analog pictures examine the ever-changing relationship between man and the natural world.
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Emanuel Constantino (b. 2002), Portugal, is an independent photographer currently living in Porto. He has a degree in Photography from School of Media Arts and Design, in P.Porto. He is currently attending the Master's Degree in Cinema and Photography - Specialization in Photography - at the same institution.
His main focus of research and authorial creation falls on the universe of documentary and fiction, in their various intersections and interactions. He seeks to understand and manipulate the boundary at which documentary ceases to be documentary and begins to assert itself as fiction, and vice versa, in his mix. Vernacular and archive photography are also areas that he explores and approaches, usually integrating them into his projects.
He has exhibited at the Portuguese Center of Photography (PT), CEFT – Casa dos Cubos (PT), Galeria da Estação – Encontros da Imagem (PT), IPMA Festival in Kaunas (LT), Belgrade Photo Month (SRB). He won the CEFT Open Call in Photography and Territory in 2024 (PT), and was selected as a New Talent at Belgrade Photo Month (SRB).
Sara Perovic’s photography begins with the personal,
drawing from her own experiences and memories, and
expands into broader themes of repetition, abstraction,
and identity. Her work explores how personal moments
shape perception and emotional expression. In Palmeral
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My Father’s Legs (2020) blends personal reflection with
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through repetitive gestures, navigating emotional
expression and abstraction. TWO (2024) explores
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In Home Mirror I, Perovic catalogs her belongings to
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Her book My Father’s Legs was shortlisted for the
Les Rencontres d’Arles Prix du Livre d’Auteur and the
Aperture/Paris Photo First Book Award. Perovic also
founded aTree, a fanzine promoting young photographers,
available at MoMA Library in New York. She works as a
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Umberto Diecinove (b. 1978) is an artist and author with with a background in literature, philosophy and poetry and a master degree in photography. His projects have been presented in various international galleries, festivals, and cultural institutions, including the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center (Budapest, Hungary), the Muséum d’Orléans pour la Biodiversité et l’Environnement (France), and the Glass Box Gallery (Santa Barbara, California, USA), among others.
In 2025, with the project I N S C Ṭ S, he was nominated for both the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass and the Leica Oskar Barnack Award.
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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.
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 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 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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