We are thrilled to announce the shortlisted photographers of the Form Photo Award 2026. This year, the standard of work is exceptionally high, reflecting the incredible talent and creativity of contemporary photographers from around the world. Each shortlisted artist brings a unique perspective, a fresh aesthetic, and thought-provoking ideas that challenge and inspire.

The Form Photo Award, supported by photobasel, Picter, and Form Magazine, is dedicated to discovering emerging voices in photography. It aims to foster global dialogue, intellectual exchange, and cross-cultural solidarity within the art community. Every submission represents a new vision, a story waiting to be shared, and the longlist is a testament to the vibrancy and diversity of contemporary photography today.

This year’s shortlist demonstrates just how extraordinary the field of contemporary photography has become, and we are proud to celebrate the vision, originality, and skill of all the artists included.

I have been photographing the Southbank and National Theatre since 2003. My training in architecture and set design, combined with an appreciation of early twentieth century art, have influenced my work. My practice invites the viewer to think about the process of visual perception and how we abstract architectural form. I search for geometries on the facades that are revealed as the light moves around the different angled planes of concrete. Shot on 35mm film, the pictures are later transformed through spatial abstraction. Contrast is manipulated to accentuate shapes and structure, creating new concrete compositions. Negatives are layered to reveal latent configurations; the resulting dynamic geometries and colour transitions explore the idea that the architecture itself is performative and creates its own theatre. My appreciation for the Brutalist complex comes from the simplicity of the trio of concrete, sunlight and shadows, there are no interruptions. This creates infinite possibilities with the spectrum of colour film. Each part of the process affects the final outcome and is a combination of control and chance. I am constantly experimenting with film (push/pull/type/exposure) but never write it down so that each film is different. The final stage is usually printing on cartridge paper leaving big borders which gives the colour saturation I want and sometimes I have a bleed on the edge of the negatives so they can appear more screen print than photographic. The works are divided into four subsets; Beautiful Brutalism, Reduction, Negatives and Reconstruction. The process for each final picture can take months; I return throughout the years’s cycle to make shadow studies. The works are divided into four subsets: The first (Beautiful Brutalism) uses increased contrast to emphasise the monolithic forms of the structure. The second (Reduction) increases the contrast further or uses overlays to flatten the facade and reduce it to colour and shapes only. The third (Negatives) explores the space between structures and how architectural materiality is emphasised through inversion. The fourth (Reconstruction) takes the negatives another step away from reality by zooming into details and juxtaposing geometries or by layering several negatives to generate dynamic spaces revealing the theatricality of the building itself. Thus there is a slow logical process in abstracting the architectural forms.

With Echo, I continue my long-standing inquiry into corporeality as a volatile terrain of political and aesthetic negotiation. Within photographic, performative and installation formats, my work deals with 'the' body as a construct, material and representative within social orders. The work comprises a total of ten camera setups, which are to be installed as a 3-channel projection in the space as well as brought together in the form of a book. Since its invention, photography has not only depicted identities, but actively co-produced them. Echo positions itself against the traditional notion of a clear photographic subject and makes the power structures of portraiture negotiable. As a trans* body, I find myself in a constant balancing act between internalised and projected politics of gazes. Photography is understood not only as a means of representation, but also as an active agent in the production of cultural meaning. On this basis, Echo examines the role of photography in the (de)construction of traditional identity categories in order to develop pluralistic perspectives on individual and collective identity. The project thus operates at the intersection of photography history, media theory and gender studies. A technical setup consisting of three synchronised cameras enables a critical reassessment of classical photo theory and connects it with contemporary discourses on the body, power, politics of visibility and self- determination. In the process of critical consciousnes(1), Echo allows the self-portrait to become a place where mechanisms of being seen are critically examined and transformed into self determined, transformative practice(2). Instead of a linear operator-referent-spectator triangle, a simultaneous, plural and fluid image space emerges. The image does not show ‘who I am’ but rather makes visible the conditions under which an ‘I’ is produced and seen in the first place. Echo thus creates a diagram of relations as a visual metaphor for the fact that identity is always mediated by the media and visibility is a space of negotiation.

ROXANA RIOS *1994 (they/them) currently based in Leipzig, Germany. After completing a dual degree in Photography and Performative Arts at HGB Leipzig and AdBK Nuremberg, Roxana graduated with a diploma in 2023. Since then, Rios’ work has been shown at Museum Folkwang Essen, Museum of Contemporary Arts Leipzig, FOTOHOF Salzburg, Fotomuseum Winterthur, and Deichtorhallen Hamburg. In 2024, Roxana received the Grant for Contemporary German Photography and was selected as a FUTURES Talent by the Triennial of Photography in 2025. Roxanas practice engages in critical discussions concerning the development of (hegemonial) narratives, as well as the relations between image- and knowledge-production. Within photographic, performative and installative formats, they examine 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.

…never loved…’ combines self-portraiture with photographs of my sister to facilitate a reflection on the gendered politics of looking and the eroticised nature of its aesthetic conventions. As a pre-gender-affirmative care trans individual, I have always desperately wanted to be loved as a girl. Often, when the prospect was in sight, I found myself internalising sexual objectification while inventing my image in that of my sister’s, in fear that I couldn’t pass for the gender I wanted to identify with. And when I became embittered as love failed, it felt as if I had enough resentment for two. My image-story then emerged as a way to work through the feeling of spite that had welled up over time. This feeling, on one hand, was fuelled by an internal frustration that I had fed the oppressive gaze of sexualisation. On the other hand, it was informed by a hatred of the norm that refuses gender affirmation for girls like me, whilst denying self-actualisation for women at large. Through the creative process, a part of my trans-feminine perspective was shaped, marked by an awareness of the skewed expectations forced upon all women: those of social, sexual, and romantic natures. Then, when I found comfort in my sister's confidence, the project became a bid for agency, empathy and connection when all felt loveless. A photographic exercise in overcoming artificial gender classifications, ‘…never loved…’ invites an acknowledgement of unequal power dynamics, inscribed in the appearances of recognised femininity and the nothingness of the girlishly mundane. Through pictorial explorations with images of myself and those of my sister’s, this collection of pictures heeds an understanding born of mutual embodied experiences of diminished mobility, of repression, and of sucking up both the gratification and the displeasures of sex and desire. In this sense, my work is a statement of solidarity which both embraces the magic of sisterhood and feminine sexuality while shedding light on the quiet cruelty of what it takes to be loved as a girl.

An Nguyen is a UK-based Vietnamese image-maker who mobilises their own intersectional identities to address ideas of subjectivity and autonomy through their photographic world-building. With a keen interest in experimentation across genres, Nguyen's practice demonstrates a commitment to examining the human condition in the current socio-political landscape through the artist's pictorial engagements with cultural meaning, affect, and interpersonal memories.

Although we have always been fascinated by the workings of the human mind and behavior, it was not until the beginning of the 20th century that experiments in psychology multiplied. The objective of experimentation on living subjects was to push the boundaries of scientific knowledge. But this type of experimentation raises many ethical questions. Some scientists have been able to abuse women, men, children and animals with impunity and discretion, under the pretext of advancing their research. Where do we draw the line between discovery and violation of rights? Throughout her studies in psychology, Coco Amardeil was confronted with these complex questions. If today it seems natural to us to denounce abusive treatment or human rights violations, this was far from being the case in the past. SHOCK THERAPY takes the form of a fictional archive: a series of contemporary photographs inspired by historical events. The series of images was staged and produced since 2024. It explores a troubled territory where photography and text intertwine, staging real cases. The diversity of framing, the format of the typewritten texts and the ambiguity of the time blur the line between reality and reconstruction. By questioning the veracity of the facts, this work reveals practices that are often forgotten or unknown to the general public.

Coco Amardeil is a Canadian/French photographer and filmmaker born in Toronto in 1965. After growing up between London, São Paulo, Montreal, and Sydney, she settled in Paris to pursue her artistic path. A psychology graduate from McGill University, she became a self-taught photographer, refining her craft over nearly ten years assisting leading fashion photographers in Canada and France. Independent in Paris since 1998, Coco has developed a distinctive visual language that blends fashion, storytelling, and cinematic atmosphere. Her work is marked by strong contrasts and an eclectic range of subjects—from models to sewers, sharks, teenagers, and bikers—reflecting her curiosity and unique artistic identity. She collaborates with renowned magazines such as Telegraph Magazine, Vogue Bambini, and Madame Figaro, and with prestigious brands including Bollinger, Le Bon Marché, Rochas, Hermès, and Armani Perfumes. Regularly exhibited, she was a resident artist at the 2024 Planches Contact Festival in Deauville. Her awards include the Professional Fine Arts Award (2018), LensCulture Portrait Award (2017), the SAIF Prize at Voies Off in Arles (2017), and the BNF Talent Grant Coup de Cœur (2018). She was also a finalist for the Virginia Prize in 2016.

Remains This project was made in the Finnmark region at the north end of Norway. This is a wild and untamed landscape of seas, mountains and hard weather. Inhabited by many different groups of people for many thousands of years, ownership of the land always been contested. In historical times there has been strife and conflict between groups of indigenous Sami tribes, and Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish and Russian people moving across the land until the Germans came to invade and fortify during the second world war. Before this there were stone age settlements, traveling hunter gatherers and viking invasions and trading posts scattered all over.. The histories we tell reside in the landscape around us, and remind us of what seems to still be there when we look around. These photographs look at old remains of stone age settlements, modern history and memorials of what we think we should remember. The prints made of standing stones that are left in the landscape have been pressed on to the stone to catch their rough surface and the shape of the stone in the sunlight. The border rivers have flowed over the photopaper and left their trails on the paper as a visual imprint. As prints I develop them in a natural reindeer moss developer, connecting the silver image on the paper materially back to the historic ground that they depict.

Beauty shapes the world we live in and has influenced how we see ourselves and others for as long as we’ve existed. 'I am not like me' explores the body as a stage for expression. It does not aim to condemn, but to understand what our appearances reveal about us: it’s not about judgment, being right or wrong, beautiful or not. It’s about the privilege of choice – the possibility of telling a story through one’s own body. It‘s about how people present themselves in moments when they feel most at ease, as if they’ve arrived in the version of themselves they want to live right now. 'I am not like me' is not a contradiction, but an embrace of transformation. It reminds us that identity is not fixed, but fluid, a process of becoming. The series captures how people shape identity through appearance, designing themselves using makeup, cosmetic procedures, fitness, or tattoos. Bodily modification can be a form of liberation, but also of painful conformity. In the moment of being photographed, those portrayed in this work made a conscious decision: to appear exactly as they want to be seen. Today, the pursuit of a “better self” is shaped by technology and capitalism. Bodies become curated, marketable products – always within societal frameworks, yet driven by personal intention. Beyond this, as a photographer, I participate in shaping the construction of beauty itself. Through composition, light, perspective, and my own female gaze, I do not merely capture identity; I actively construct and define what beauty is or can be. Who gets to define what is beautiful, and at what cost? How much of our appearance is truly self-determined, and how much is shaped by external ideals? This series highlights variety, transformation, performative staging of identities, and the beauty that lies within. It embraces scenarios as unpredictable terrains, imperfection, and emergence, where identity can shift, new narratives take shape, and the privilege of choosing to transform oneself is fully realized.

Lina Czerny (b. 1993) is a freelance photographer based in Berlin. She studied photography at Ostkreuzschule für Fotografie (graduated October 2025) and previously earned a Master’s degree in Comparative Arts & Media Studies from VU Amsterdam. Her photographic work engages with social and documentary themes, often uncovering aesthetics and compositions in unexpected contexts. She carefully arranges and selects her subjects to create a distinct visual language. Her photobook I am not like me will be released end of October by Kerber.

Between 1980 and 2000, southern Switzerland—especially Ticino—saw an unusually high number of unexplained sightings linked to UFOs (now UAPs). By the mid-’90s, with just 300,000 inhabitants, Ticino hosted three ufology centers collecting over 700 reports of encounters. A decade earlier, the Swiss Confederation had launched a secret study with the army and air force: dossier 248-CH. Recently declassified, it admits many cases remain unexplained. Today, only CUSI remains active, along with sky-watching groups like the Orion Brotherhood in Losone, who believe the story has only just begun. 248-CH is a photographic journey into the mystery of UFOs (UAPs), tracing their presence across the skies and landscapes of Southern Switzerland.

Made under the Peruvian sun, Animism is a series of lumen prints created across three Peruvian geographies: the Pacific coast, the Andean highlands, and the Amazon rainforest. Conceived as a collaboration between the elements and photographic paper, native medicinal plants are placed directly upon the paper in their environments. Rooted in Andean and Amazonian cosmologies that recognize that all plants possess a spirit, the images emerge through contact and exposure rather than photographic capture, as imprints shaped by light, water, temperature and time.

Ana Sotelo is a Peruvian photographer and educator whose work focuses on gender, culture, and the relationship between humans and the natural world. She often merges art with activism, creating collaborative projects that amplify collective voices and experiences. Based in Washington, D.C., she teaches high-school photography while continuing to develop long-form photographic projects.

"A Myth in the Making" examines UFO sightings as an expression of a fundamental tension between human existence and the incomprehensible vastness of the universe. Faced with its immense scale, it is just as hard to imagine that we are alone in it as the possibility of extraterrestrial life itself. In the absence of clear evidence, UFO sightings take shape through perception, imagination, and cultural narratives. They become projection surfaces for a deeper question: how do we understand our own existence in a universe that is far beyond our grasp? The images we create of the unknown do not exist on their own. They emerge through a network of personal experiences, media images, and shared cultural ideas. Within this interplay, our ideas of the cosmos are formed, revealing less about what is out there and more about our need for meaning, orientation, and belonging. The work also refers to ideas by C. G. Jung, who in the 1950s described UFO sightings as expressions of collective psychological processes. Especially in times of uncertainty, such projections become more visible, reflecting a shared attempt to make sense of forces greater than ourselves. Statistics show that during times of crises, UFO sightings around the world seem to increase. Let alone in Germany the number of UFO sightings nearly doubled from 2022 to 2023. The photographs in "A Myth in the Making" move between documentary and fiction. They explore how our understanding of the cosmos is not simply discovered, but shaped through perception, memory, and present experience. UFO myths appear as part of an ongoing process: an attempt to situate human existence within an overwhelming and largely unknowable universe.

Anika Spereiter (*1990 in East Germany) is an analogue photographer based in Berlin. After receiving her degree in Media Informatics at University of Applied Sciences Harz in 2016, she studied photography at Ostkreuz School for Photography in Berlin and finished her studies in 2022 in the graduation class of Ute Mahler and Linn Schröder. Anika’s artistic approach is rooted in her interest in psychology and perception. She likes to explore the boundaries between truth and illusion, and so she often combines documentary and fiction within her photographic narratives. Memory, identity and discomfort often play a central role in her work. In 2022 she self-published her first photo book "A Myth in the Making". Together with photographer Tim Bruns and photo historian Annekathrin Müller, Anika co-founded Fotoskopia, an exhibition project dedicated to bring contemporary photography to life in rural areas where it has had little presence to date, thereby enabling cultural participation. Besides her photographic practice Anika works as an animator and motion graphics artist.

From 2019 to 2021 I have sought intensive contact with people who collects curious things. Those whose motif at first glance may seem a bit bizarre or enraptured. In doing so, I deliberately focused on the collected objects, because if you look through the eyes of the collector, with his innocence on the images, what was just declared nonsensical, strange, worthless, even disgusting or foolish, suddenly becomes clear, familiar, beautiful and fascinating. The motivations and stories behind the collection drove me to photograph this work. Driven by a hair fetish, Regine von Chossy from Munich collects hair, for example, and exhibits it in her own hair museum with dated and signed hair donations. The photographer Karl-Ludwig Lange collects bricks because the stamps on them give him information about the local history of his surroundings, and the taxidermist Navena Widulin from Berlin collects gallstones, continuing a tradition of the Berlin Medical History Museum of the Charite. Collecting is as old as mankind itself; it would not have survived without collecting. Objects have always been selected and accumulated, whether for use or mere contemplation, and information has always been collected, for exchange and as a basis for forthcoming decisions. But it is in an age where information is gathered to increase capital that I would like to turn, in a departure from this trend, to those collections that seek to represent the supposedly useless.

“The Cosmonaut” is an attempt to cope with grief, seeking the meaning of loss in the laws of physics and time. For every moment passed on Earth, there are points in the universe from which said moment could be observed in the present. The past does not look at us from afar in time, but from afar in space. All visual information travels at the speed of light, carried by photons, as does visual information from my best friend’s last months, before his death in December 2008. That visual information is far from here, and every day it drifts further away into space. But somewhere it is becoming present right now. Always. For any given moment in time, there is a place in space from which, looking down on Earth with a powerful enough telescope, we would see my friend still alive, even if it would be impossible to interact with him, even if it is somewhere we can’t reach. Part of the project consists in trying to record this motion of moving away, shooting each year a picture of a star which is as far away in Space –in terms of light-years– as far in time were the last days of my friend here on earth. In 2019, just before December and almost eleven years after my friend passed away, the first picture was taken of a star eleven light-years away from earth. The second picture was taken in 2020, at star twelve light-years away from Earth. And so on. This means that, if we had been on such stars at the time of the shot, looking at the Earth we would have seen my friend still alive. But the same assumption is valid in reverse: the starlight we see in the center of each of the photographs in the series dates back to the time when my friend was still alive. Thus, we are not recording a trace from the past that has always been sitting around here. We are recording something that is happening now and that wasn’t here before, something that started its journey during my best friends last period of life, and is becoming present on earth only many years later. In this pursuit of solace through physics truths, other issues come at play. The reason for the irreversibility of time lies within the laws of Thermodynamics. The idea that temporal and spacial distances can somehow be exchanged may bring new perspectives. Lastly, we gaze upon images, and, to those who are aware of it, images can often look at us, from afar in time and afar in space. There is a kind of consolation in this.

My work is concerned with questions about the (extended) portrait in times of social-media-selfies, constant surveillance in contrast to the right to privacy.. I investigate technology and social use of portrait photography through the use of different analogue and digital cameras, but also through manual and digital post production. Proposal: „autres“ (french: others) The proposed project, “autres” uses portrait photographs of “others”: I ask people to sit in a photo studio and have their portrait taken. I also tell them to bring different outfits for the purpose of variation. Their pose, sitting direction and the lighting setting are the same in different places (so far Austria, Germany, but also along residencies and academic conferences in Finland and France). Later, after editing the raw material, I start retouching a selection digitally through automated algorithms. The focus lies on personal identifiers, such as head, skin and hair. The software offers automated replacements of these areas. (NO genearative AI!) I do set some definitions, which result in varying versions offered by the supposedly intelligent software. The results are sculptural, crippled, beheaded and weird figures. The model remains anonymous, but their poses, taste and choice of clothes and their individual physique refer to their gender, social class, and age. Fundamental functions of photographic representation remain. While I avoid depiction and identification, I also liberate and

Gerlinde Miesenböck studied photography in Austria, England and Finland and also has received a PhD in theory-and-practise-based research on photography. In the past she has been awarded many awards and grants through public and private institutions. She has exhibited internationally on three continents, including solo and group exhibitions the Blue Coat Gallery in Liverpool/UK, the Northern Photography Center in Oulu/FI, the Central European House of Photography in Bratislava/SK, Chongqing/China, Lentos Art Museum in Linz/A, "13. Bjcem-Biennale for Young Artists of Europe and the Mediterranean“, Bari/Italy, and has shown work at different Photofestivals in Vienna/AT, Lodz/PL, Kaunas/LT and Arles/F, as well as in museums such as the Lentos Art Museum Linz, the state museum of Upper Austria. etc. In her work she has been concerned about "home" and "identity" in which she often has worked with self staging because of the ethics of photographing the faces of others. Thus, over the years, she has become concerned with questions about the (extended) portrait in times of social-media-selfies, constant surveillance in contrast to the right to privacy and hiding. She investigates technology and social use of portrait photography through the use of different analogue and digital cameras, but also through manual and digital post production.

My photographic work weaves personal histories, memories, and emotions, blending portraiture and still life into a unified narrative. In my self-portrait series, I honor the strong, inspiring women who have shaped my life. Women in my family have always been strong figures, driven, hard workers, outspoken, inspiring, and pillars of the family. I became a photographer when most of the women I admired and grew up with were no longer in this world. This work balances past and present, desire and memories, creating a conversation between generations of women. In parallel, my still-life photography reflects my connection to the sensory world around me through the careful study of light, objects, and forms. It embraces memories of my childhood in Mexico that smell like long weekends in my grandparents' countryside home, searching for insects after sunset and chasing fireflies in the dark with my bare feet on the grass. Memories that smell like orange trees, wet grass, and that of a place that holds us [me and my family] in time for eternity. Together, these works celebrate time, place, and the bonds that hold us across generations.

Even though it is the desire for things that are destroying the planet we tend to form a strong attachment to all sorts of objects. This ambivalence is what I want to explore by making a collection of memento mori from my own debris of useless stuff. Things are the opposite of nature. While nature stands for what is real and what is good, things represent that which is fake, immoral, and unnatural. This is even more true when we know that it is our accumulation of and desire for things that are destroying the planet. So why do we still form such strong attachments to things, even to the useless, ugly, or mass-produced objects? With a medium format digital camera, I photograph the stuff that always create disorder, are stored away, or give you a bad conscience with their constant reminder of over-consumption, poor design, uselessness, and transience. The project will ultimately consist of about 30 images of objects, of which many are photographed against various backdrops, in the form of prints from my own photo archive and photographs of textiles as well as images from my collection of vintage photo books. The images in the project will have many different visual expressions, as the subject (i.e., the backdrop + the object) directs the visual language in each individual image. What is common among the images, however, is an investigation of the nature of photography as a creator of illusions and false spaces. Last, The Moral of Matter also investigate how the spectator, not only read a picture, but also are able to feel a photograph with their eyes. At least that is my goal with these pictures.

Una Hunderi was born in 1971 in Wellington, New Zealand. She grew up in Trondheim and studied photography at the Bergen Academy of Art and Design and film at the the University of Amsterdam. She lives and works in Oslo. She has held solo exhibitions at venues such as Kunstnerforbundet (2019), Akershus Kunstsenter (2014), Galleri Monthly (2014), Art Contemporain; Luxemburg (2008), and Galleri Brandstrup (2005, 2001). Hunderi has also participated in group exhibitions at Kristiansand Kunsthall (2020), Fotogalleriet (2016), F15 (2009, 2002), Oslo Kunstforening (2006), Haugar Vestfold Kunstmuseum (2002), Hordaland Kunstsenter (1999) and The Centre for Creative Photography in Jyväskylä (1997). She has published two books; Happy End of the World (2005) and BORN FREE (2019) Her works are included in collections such as the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, and the Equinor Art Collection.

When it comes to question about how the volcanos work, practically everything is a mystery. Signals may appear before the eruption, but it is never certain it will occur. It is almost impossible to determine the time when the eruption starts and the moment when magma becomes unstable or predict the intensity of eruption. Volcanoes symbolize the duality of destructive force and the new beginning. Spanish Canary Island ,la Palma, only exists because of volcanic eruption built this land long time ago, forming the archipelago known as the Canary Islands. In 2021, during 85 days the volcano Cumbre Vieja on La Palma has been active. The eruption was the longest in the history of the island and the most destructive of last century in Europe. The volcano, which has been declared extinct, came into light changing the island and people’s lives irreversibly at the same time demonstrating man’s powerlessness against element. Fascinated by this natural phenomenon but also interested in the relationship of the island’s inhabitants with the environment and the volcano itself, I traveled to la Palma in 2022 twice. During my trips, I experienced how extremely close and inseparable is relationship of human and nature and at the same time how fragile is the environment shaped and managed by man. What I found unique was also the approach to life of the local habitants of the island and their great humility towards the volcano. Even in such a difficult situation I heard from them: „You know it is a great tragedy, but volcano was first here, gave us a land for a living, later we came, we have to remember it and respect it” (...) „Living here on a volcanic island is a love hate relationship"

When it comes to question about how the volcanos work, practically everything is a mystery. Signals may appear before the eruption, but it is never certain it will occur. It is almost impossible to determine the time when the eruption starts and the moment when magma becomes unstable or predict the intensity of eruption. Volcanoes symbolize the duality of destructive force and the new beginning. Spanish Canary Island ,la Palma, only exists because of volcanic eruption built this land long time ago, forming the archipelago known as the Canary Islands. In 2021, during 85 days the volcano Cumbre Vieja on La Palma has been active. The eruption was the longest in the history of the island and the most destructive of last century in Europe. The volcano, which has been declared extinct, came into light changing the island and people’s lives irreversibly at the same time demonstrating man’s powerlessness against element. Fascinated by this natural phenomenon but also interested in the relationship of the island’s inhabitants with the environment and the volcano itself, I traveled to la Palma in 2022 twice. During my trips, I experienced how extremely close and inseparable is relationship of human and nature and at the same time how fragile is the environment shaped and managed by man. What I found unique was also the approach to life of the local habitants of the island and their great humility towards the volcano. Even in such a difficult situation I heard from them: „You know it is a great tragedy, but volcano was first here, gave us a land for a living, later we came, we have to remember it and respect it” (...) „Living here on a volcanic island is a love hate relationship"

The land waits patiently, impartial as it observes a callous sprawl. I’m settled here now, without the congregation of my ancestors. My fossilized heritage appears jumbled from where I stand, but traces left behind by clumsy cousins litter the landscape. These traces—clues half buried—lie waiting to be unearthed, yet the story they tell depends on what’s desired. What myth do I construct from the few vestiges I find? What organism do I shape from a tailbone and a claw? The land interjects, sighs, and groans, as in a fairy tale, while I surveil and dig. It reminds me, its voice moist: “You come from me, after all… You’re just suffering from a particularly diabolical case of amnesia.” A lingering thought, feebly expressed as a feeling, croaks in the back of my throat, ducking into my stomach when prodded. I nod passively in agreement, gaze outstretched—always looking, rarely seeing. As the soil gurgles, snow begins to fall, and the youthful trees surrounding me assemble into two glistening flanks, kneeling one by one in royal veneration. I turn around to see to whom they’re bowing, but the snowflakes—dinner plates at this point—shroud the frosty sovereign. I blurt, childishly, as I come to my senses: “No, you are!”—instantly ashamed of my sudden insolence. Gently, the whispers of that heavenly flock patter my eardrums, and I’m reminded of what I came here for; though in a few breaths the rustle of a tree branch and the flapping of a flag will drown them out.

Fyodor Shiryaev is a photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. Born in 1996 in the U.S. to Russian parents, Fyodor spent time as a child between St. Petersburg, Russia and the U.S., before settling in New York City in his early teens. His younger years, up until his early 20s, were taken up almost exclusively by classical piano studies. Having dedicated many years to performing and competing on an international stage, he eventually, during his time at Conservatory, pivoted his focus away from music to photography. He received a B.A. in photography in 2019 from Bard College, studying under Stephen Shore, Barbara Ess, An-My Le, and Tim Davis. Drawing on elements from Slavic folk tales and biblical stories, Fyodor’s work traces intergenerational memory within émigré communities. Rooted in specific towns and landscapes, his practice imbues a documentary approach with a fantastical sensibility.

This series envisions young children as contemporary society's superheroes. Superheroes have long occupied a central position in American popular culture. Society turns to superhero narratives in times of unrest as a source of hope. In the superhero narrative, right and wrong are clearly defined, and right will ultimately triumph. From generation to generation, the qualities those heroes embody have changed to reflect the best type of leader believed to confront the challenges of the moment. In this critical moment, with crises seeming to close in from every side, it can be hard to imagine any combination of qualities adequate to the task. Children's tendency to play superhero has a slightly different significance. They imagine themselves as safe, strong, and in control. The more out of control reality, the more intense the need to believe that control is possible. I have watched my own children grow from childhood innocence into jaded young adulthood. I both miss their youthful embrace of the world, and admire the determination with which they now try to change it. In this work, I transform images of my children when they were younger into superheroes. I have placed them in landscapes that foreshadow a desolate urban future. I have given them brightly colored capes, a celebration of the beauty of the confidence with which, unfazed by the desolation around them, they believe that anything is possible. For many adults, the world now feels out of control to a degree we have never experienced before. This work explores the idea that children, with their ability to continue to hope and dream, to use their imaginations to embrace the world and possibility, are the superheroes society needs to grapple with the challenges in front of us. But it also depicts a mother's concern for her children. There is an underlying impotence to their efforts to play at power. In their vulnerability and helplessness, they embody the anxiety of a society on the brink, struggling to believe in the future, unable to confront true accountability for its actions.

Fractures is a long-term photographic project examining damaged yet functioning vehicles as material traces of urban life. Developed primarily during my years living in Los Angeles—a city structured around automobile dependency—the series explores how mobility, endurance, and adaptation become inscribed on the surfaces of everyday objects. Rather than treating these vehicles as evidence of accident or neglect, the project approaches them as accidental sculptures shaped by impact, repair, and continued use. Dented metal panels resemble shifting terrain, fractured surfaces read like cartographic lines, and exposed mechanical interiors evoke anatomical structures. Through close observation, a moment of rupture becomes suspended in stillness. Working at close range, the images move between abstraction and recognition. Surface, texture, and form dominate the frame, allowing damaged fragments to detach from their utilitarian origins. What initially appears as an abstract composition slowly resolves into a familiar object, shifting the viewer’s perception between material detail and urban context. Improvised repairs—tape matched to body panels, provisional coverings, visible seams—become quiet gestures of persistence. These interventions reveal how damage is absorbed into everyday life through small acts of maintenance and adaptation, echoing the quiet resilience that shapes human experience. The project unfolds through walking and repetition. Images emerge gradually through sustained proximity rather than predetermined narrative. This process allows the camera to linger on what remains after events: traces of impact, surfaces worn by time, and the subtle transformations produced by continued use. Fractures proposes an alternative cartography of the city—one mapped not through landmarks or skylines but through surfaces marked by endurance. Within these fragments, the ordinary shifts toward abstraction, and damage becomes a site of reflection on resilience embedded in the everyday urban landscape.

Remember Me as a Place is a long-term documentary project exploring migration, memory, and identity through the Venezuelan diaspora, including the artist’s own family. Born in Caracas to a Venezuelan father and Ecuadorean mother, she immigrated to the U.S. as a child and grew up undocumented in Florida. Since 2019, she has documented relatives and other Venezuelan migrants through portraits, landscapes, and archival materials, tracing hope, trauma, and resilience across generations. The work emphasizes dignity, cultural continuity, and the emotional weight of memory, reclaiming and preserving these stories for the future.

ictionary of Past and Present Self is a visual and material exploration of memory, identity, and the material traces that connect who we were with who we are. Through a hybrid practice that intertwines photography, organic materials, text, and sculptural objects, the series investigates how personal histories are embedded in the physical world: held in surfaces, surfaces altered, marks that accumulate, and the fragile relics of experience. Drawing on vintage photographs, personal ephemera, and natural elements, each work in the series functions like a lexical entry: a fragment, a clue, a resonance between past and present. Photographs are re‑woven with stitched threads, layered with organic matter, or embedded into objects that carry their own histories. Through these processes, the series collapses temporal distance, collapsing moments into one another to reveal patterns of persistence, transformation, and intensity. Rather than presenting memory as static or singular, Dictionary of Past and Present Self approaches it as a dynamic topology, an unbounded field in which identity is continually constructed, revised, and re‑occupied. The works gesture toward both loss and continuity, honouring the way images and materials can act as containers for emotion, association, and the subtle material echoes of lived experience. This series invites reflection on how we remember, how we inhabit the past in the present, and how images themselves can act as porous sites where inner worlds and outward forms intersect.

"In the Care of Light" is a series of ten diptychs came from encounters in nature shaped by quiet observation of inevitable change. I like to think about liminal spaces - thresholds where the human and natural worlds meet and where stillness and light are agents for change. Working with found objects, the human form and fleeting moments of light, I explore how life forms, erodes and reconfigures. Light moves through the images as a shared condition revealing what is easily overlooked. Rather than depicting nature as backdrop the work situates the human as entangled within evolving living systems, where transformation unfolds quietly and continuously, just beyond the limits of perception.

Lara’s photographs explore the threshold between human and more than human worlds engaging with themes of metamorphosis, mortality, stillness, and silence. In 2025 she self published her debut book To Dust, a contemplative body of work tracing quiet connections between the body and the natural world, shaped by notions of inevitability and transformation. Her work has received multiple awards including finalist recognition in the Kuala Lumpur Portrait Prize (2022) and the Lucie Foundation Portrait Awards (2021), and she was named Australasia’s Top Emerging Portrait Photographer in 2018. She was awarded First Prize at the Taranaki Art Awards (2023). Gilks’ photography has been featured in Art New Zealand (Winter 2022) and Lenscratch (October 2025). She has exhibited widely in group shows across Europe, the States, Asia, and throughout Aotearoa New Zealand. Lara lives in Wellington, New Zealand.

I used to take pictures of women I dated, but then we broke up and I couldn't take pictures anymore, so instead I started calling out to women in parks and around town and taking their pictures. The expressions and vibes that women show when being photographed by strangers are similar to the ones she showed when we broke up, so I wanted to photograph them.It was a way to heal myself.I've heard that painfully sad things contain something pure and beautiful. This photo book contains photos taken between 2006 and 2026. I started taking photos in Yoyogi Park, but then moved to Shibuya, Harajuku, Shinjuku, Ueno, Kichijoji, and Shimokitazawa, and photographed over 1,000 people. At first, I was looking for someone to take photos in place of my ex-girlfriend, but as I continued, I think I started going there to take photos for other reasons. I ask, "Can I take your picture?" but most of them refuse. Many people in Tokyo live lonely and difficult lives. I think there are many people who don't tell others, but live their lives in ways I can't even imagine. They go to work or school with anxiety. In order to be sure that they can live with peace of mind, they need to think about things and make decisions. That's why they don't want to be photographed by strangers. Sometimes they can walk around the city for a whole day and not be able to take a picture. Sometimes they can't take a picture for three days, a week, or a month. Even so, when I try to talk to them, they sometimes ask, "Are you sure you want me?" The woman is more surprised that she was chosen than why I take her picture. Maybe she doesn't realize how good she is, or maybe she doesn't have confidence. She doesn't even ask me why I take her picture. I wonder why. Maybe truly beautiful people are those who don't realize their own beauty.I read in a novel that "There is nothing more beautiful than pure emotion. There is nothing more powerful than something beautiful." I've also been told, "It's because you looked like you were having a hard time." I thought that selfless, altruistic behavior was noble and beautiful, and that it would look good in a photograph.They are not weak beings who lack confidence. They have come to seem very big and sublime existence to me.

Yosuke Morimoto is a Japanese photographer based in Tokyo whose practice focuses on encounters with people in public space and the distance that remains between photographer and subject. Since the early 2000s, he has photographed women he meets in parks and on the streets of Tokyo after brief exchanges, working consistently with 35mm film, a single-lens reflex camera, and hand-made darkroom prints.His long-term project Yoyogi Park, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo brings together portraits made between 2006 and 2023 alongside photographs of the urban environments where these encounters took place. By sequencing portraits together with landscapes that the subjects may have passed through or seen, the work explores presence and absence, memory, and the impossibility of fully reaching another person. Developed over nearly two decades through repeated short encounters with more than one thousand people across Tokyo, the project reflects on how fleeting moments accumulate over time within the structure of a photobook.Morimoto’s work has been recognized for its lyrical and personal photographic language and its sustained engagement with contemporary urban life.

The photographs are a part of a project which I call "Still lifes". Spring 2020 I started the projekt and it is still ongoing. The overall goal with the photographs is composition, light and shadows, a whole gray scale and the material representation. I am photographing with a 4"x5" camera and black-and-white sheet film. The negatives are then digitized and the work continues digitally.

Born 1961 i Oldenburg, Tyskland -Moved to Sweden for studies at the School of Photography University of Gothenburg 1985-88 -Living in Linköping, Sweden -Decades of photographing as a amateur -Have partcipated in Group Exhibitions and two Separate Exhibitions in Sweden -Published photographs in a swedish photo magazine -Have received two scholarships from the Swedish Arts Grants Committee

From the philosophy of Zen Buddhism, several aesthetic principles have emerged in Japan. One of them is mono no aware, the beauty of transience. In Zen, everything that exists is understood as part of a constant process of change, embedded in a continuous flow of becoming and passing away. Transience is therefore not seen as a loss, but as a fundamental expression of life itself. Every moment is considered complete and unique, fleeting and fragile, and precisely for this reason of particular value. This attitude forms the foundation of my photographic work. Through photography, my aim is to encourage a renewed sense of awareness in the act of seeing. I am particularly drawn to quiet, inconspicuous moments that surround us in everyday life and often go unnoticed: grasses emerging from a blanket of snow, a flock of birds in a winter sky, fleeting light conditions, or subtle traces of human presence. These are things we encounter every day, yet for many they remain little more than background noise. For me, however, they reveal a quiet and often overlooked beauty beyond the obvious. My interest lies not in the literal depiction of places and objects but in their poetic and emotional interpretation. For me photography serves as a medium through which atmosphere, mood, and the unsayable can become visible. To achieve this, I use a visual language characterized by reduction and stillness. I prefer to work under particular light and weather conditions, using fog, snow, and the diffuse light of overcast skies. This subdued light softens contrasts, allows details to recede, and gives the images an almost painterly quality. Through techniques such as deliberate overexposure I try to move the images even further away from a purely realistic representation. What emerges are visual spaces that suggest rather than describe, leaving room for contemplative viewing. Within this openness lies the possibility of slowing down our gaze and developing a more attentive and respectful relationship with our surroundings. The images invite us not only to notice the fleeting, but to approach it with appreciation, as part of a living whole that surrounds us, and whose fragility calls for our care and attentiveness.

Uwe Langmann Born in 1985 in Memmingen, Germany Lives and works in Potsdam and Memmingen Self-taught artist 2005 - 2010 worked as director, cameraman and cutter for various local commercial films as well as artistic short movies since 2010 he works as a fine art photographer since 2013 he is part of the curatorial team of Fotogalerie Potsdam e. V. since 2015 he has his works shown at artfair Art Karlsruhe (2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2023 & 2026 one artist show

From darkness, light emerges. Since February 2022, Ukraine has been plunged into a brutal war that continues to devastate its cities and landscapes. Across the country, buildings stand gutted, roofs collapsed, walls torn open. Interiors once filled with everyday life are now exposed to the sky, their fragments scattered like the remains of interrupted lives. These ruins are not only traces of destruction. They carry the memory of what once existed there. Behind every shattered wall lies the imprint of human presence: families lived here, children played, ordinary lives unfolded within these spaces. This work approaches these places not as spectacles of ruin, but as sites of memory. What interests me is not death itself, but the lingering presence of life that once inhabited these walls — a quiet trace of intimacy, fragile yet persistent. Through the use of light, the photographs seek to reveal this tension between destruction and survival. Light threads its way through cracks and openings, illuminating fragments that still hold the echo of human presence. Each image becomes an act of witness: a way of saying this was. And within the light that crosses these fractures, another possibility emerges — the fragile promise that one day, life may return.

My name is Yves Lacroix, I am a photographer and I dream of cinema. I was born in France in 1972, but it was images that watched me grow up. Combining documentary and staged photography, my large format tableaux — where natural and artificial light always mix — are in color. They speak of the human condition, of the fractures of this world, using symbolism, analogy and sometimes irony. I photograph what disturbs, while searching for what is beautiful. As a child, I spent hours in front of the television, at my grandmother's side, captivated by the endless horizons of westerns and the universe of American series. From those moments frozen in cathode light was born, no doubt, my passion for images and that American imagination which has never left me. I had begun to think in images without yet knowing it. After studying law, I left that world in 1997 to become a photographer's assistant in Paris, then in New York. Years alongside Dominique Issermann, Patrick Demarchelier and Neil Kirk taught me the discipline of the studio and the demands of light. I then worked for the luxury industry — Yves Saint Laurent, Van Cleef & Arpels, Karl Lagerfeld. My work moves between cinema and reality, between the dreamlike and the documentary. A narrative, humanist universe, where light is the lead character and where places, sets and atmospheres carry as much soul as those who inhabit them.

"In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni" The palindromes Latin line, whose translation is ‘we wander around in the night and the fire consumes us’, recedes on itself, built letter by letter as a labyrinth, perfectly represents the form and content of ‘perdition’. The phrase certainly has very ancient roots, its attribution, even if there is no evidence, could date back to Sindonio Apollinare. The definition could be related both to moths, which, attracted by the light of a fire, end up killing themselves; or to torches, which are consumed by burning in the night. The Latin expression inspires my work and drives my photographic stream of consciousness. In this series the path becomes a metaphor of everyone’s journey: sometimes a hidden and broken path, hard to find, sometimes seems more like a labyrinth in which we wonder in constant search of our destiny.

Ying Ang’s Fruiting Bodies reimagines mushrooms as both biological forms and feminist metaphors, exploring non-reproductive cycles of growth, decay, and renewal. Photographed in inner-city parks in Melbourne, the series examines how cultural fetishization of fertility shapes perceptions of women, nature, and reproduction. The mushrooms—solitary, clustered, decaying—become stand-ins for the female form, resilient and sensuous, challenging hierarchical notions of fertility and celebrating communal, rhizomatic, and transformative power beyond reproduction.

This series, composed of staged photographic scenes, offers hypothetical and fragmentary glimpses into how future generations might adapt to emerging conditions through adaptive plasticity—a phenomenon known in biology as polyphenism. The title derives from the English word “unknown,” referring to the notion of an imagined future, and the biological concept of polyphenism, which describes the visually perceptible transformation of an organism in response to environmental factors such as food availability, temperature, or population density. In this context, polyphenism is used as a conceptual tool to structure and analyse imagined transformation processes—both mentally and thematically. These speculative perspectives are materialized through photographic stagings that function as still fragments of a “constructive episodic simulation” of the future: imagined snapshots shaped by memory and reassembled into visions of what may come.

Figures is a series that challenges gender inequality. The woman as a sex object, as subordinate, as inferior, representations that, unfortunately, remain widespread and are even increasing in many parts of the world.The works are composed of images sourced from vintage porn magazines from the 1960s to the 1980s. In these rephotographed collages, the women’s bodies are hidden, covered beneath a layer of rough, white-painted paper. Here and there, a fragment of the woman remains visible, a patch of skin, a lock of hair. Although the women are obscured, their poses make curiosity about what lies beneath unnecessary.What does it mean when the female body is removed from view? Is this intervention an act of protection, an attempt to reclaim autonomy, or rather a repetition of the power and oppression mechanisms the work seeks to expose? The position of women worldwide remains under pressure. Misogyny, sexism, and gender inequality are still deeply rooted. Figures invites reflection on the representation and position of women and emphasizes the ongoing need for awareness, equality, and self-determination.

Bonnita Postma (1959) is an Amsterdam based photographer/ visual artist. In her work she uses found images to explore themes as identity, gender, femininity and equality. She extracts fragments of everyday images from their original contexts in order to use them as building blocks for a new surreal reality, constructing a new visual language. By re-photographing the collaged works, she brings them back to their original form. Postma is someone who dares to push the boundaries of traditional photography. In recent years Postma has exhibited at different places in- and outside Europe, and was shortlisted for the RABO Photographic Prize 2022 by the Dutch National Portrait Gallery, as well as winner of the Selection Of '23 ànd '25 Dutch Photography Awards, and a finalist in the Head On Photo Awards 2023.

I am a collector. Ever since I can remember, I have been collecting everything, particularly my own things as a sort of memorial. Saving every single object is for me the first step of a possible collection: notebooks, cans, stuffed animals, receipts, batteries, or parts of myself like teeth, hair, and nails, just to mention some of them. To keep and catalog objects has always given me pleasure. It started with me collecting memories and things that I was emotionally attached to, and it developed into an obsession to pile up ordinary objects in series. The only complication I have is the space. Collecting requires a lot of physical and mental space, which led me to find ways to let things go. I have realized that, to be able to throw anything away, I first need to celebrate the detachment by taking pictures of it. The composition is the result of the entire process, the image is the purpose to achieve. By then, I convince myself that what I have collected will somehow survive, especially using films as they don't leave me empty-handed. The project Therapy is photography used as a remedy to an obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

Tommaso Sacconi is a photographer and filmmaker with a Master's degree in Emergency Architecture and International Cooperation. After his studies between Rome and Barcelona he moves to Egypt collaborating with an NGO and then to New York where he currently lives and works. His personal long-term photographic projects adopt a serial approach, with research and repetition forming the essence of his work. His practice frequently explores existential themes such as memory and identity. From 2017 to 2021 he co-directs a feature documentary 'Grain: Analog Renaissance', which premieres at the DOC NYC Film Festival (2021). His work has been published and exhibited in events and venues, including the 'Royal Photographic Society'; the 'Sony World Photography Award'; 'Paratissima'; the 'Combat Prize' and the 'Arte Laguna Prize'.

“We come from nothing and vanish into nothing” . And yet, in between, we make so much noise. A lingering scent. A fading glimmer. A heartbeat lost to the wind. My camera set out to capture this existence on the edge of the precipice: the delicate tension between fading beauty and the urge to leave a mark. “Into Thin Air” tells the story of a group of circus artists who, despite hardship, continue to chase wonder and vitality — a final spark before the flame fades. Rooted in the nomadic essence of humanity, it reflects our drive to leave traces in our wake. We are bound to move through life, making noise as we pass, searching for meaning in a world that won’t stay still. Even as we lose hold of the familiar, we reach for something greater: memories of splendor, echoes of what once was, propelling us forward. “Into Thin Air” is not just a tribute to a circus on the edge of vanishing. It’s a reflection on life’s impermanence, our need to endure, and our desire to be seen and heard. Suspended between origin and disappearance, we flare — briefly, brightly — before we fade.

It’s Raining in the Room traces the journey of an individual suspended and reconstructed between reality and imagination through a series of poetic, fragmented images. The project emerged from the loosening of identity and life structure I experienced after returning to my hometown. In a familiar room, with repetitive routines and limited activities, everyday life became a series of dull cycles. The more stable this life became, the more anxious I felt. A sense of detachment from others and from the world beyond the door grew stronger. The disconnection between my body’s inertia and the slowness of my thoughts made me realize that life doesn’t automatically flow forward with time. The present no longer leads to the future. Caught between the uncertainty of moving forward and the fear of stepping back, I found myself suspended in the now, an extended state of waiting. I try to transform this spreading sense of loss into a visual experience. I use home as a site for observation and experimentation, focusing on domestic spaces, everyday objects, and gestures. Guided by bodily intuition, I wander through familiar spaces, dismantling and restructuring objects, creating subtle disturbances in the stillness of daily life. These simple, repetitive actions become a way of re-entering life. The project reflects on how individuals use small gestures to reorganize their surroundings and reconnect with reality when external order and inner rhythm are no longer aligned.

When the war began, the question “How are we?” echoed across Ukraine and beyond. Over time, answering has grown unbearably difficult. The war in Ukraine is, in many ways, the first online war, where Ukrainians process thousands of images and texts daily. Most construct an imagined, multidimensional reality from fragmented reports, documentaries, and eyewitness accounts. These internal landscapes make it hard to connect with one’s own psyche, which operates in emergency mode under the weight of constant vigilance. The images in the artist’s collages, made with a 3D smartphone scanner (Polycam), reflect this complex, volumetric reality of Ukraine.

Ecaterina Andriuscenco (b. 1988, Tiraspol, Transnistria) is a Berlin-based photographer and visual artist currently studying sculpture at Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee. Originally trained as an architect, her practice combines photography, archival imagery, and sculptural materials to explore memory, perception, and states of transition. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including Invisible Lines at Alte Münze, Berlin (2025) during EMOP and Sense of Safety at Yermilov Centre, Kharkiv (2024). She received an Honorable Mention at PX3 Prix de la Photographie Paris (2023) and was selected among the Top 5 of Nikon Female Facets (2024). Born in Transnistria and having lived and worked in Ukraine before relocating to Germany, Andriuscenco’s practice reflects on shifting realities, personal and collective memory, and the fragile boundaries between past and present.

“Can you keep a secret” is a long-term project focused on child sexual abuse. CSA has been running in my family trees since generations, poisoning many of its branches, including mine. My approach starts from recreating the places of trauma, inviting the subjects to engage physically with the space through cathartic, almost performative actions. Guided by maieutic conversations, these encounters transform in a visual framework that reflects each person's identity and develops a visual dimension between dream and reality; it also recalls the process our minds undergo, while recording/cancelling the trauma. The diary form, unfolds as an inner archive — a fragmented narrative of violated childhood, a memory shifting between denial and revelation. This project begins with me - with my will to seek for truth. But it opens immediately to a collective dimension. It becomes a global journey, a documentary investigation that weaves testimonies and places into a storytelling that doesn’t aim to explain, but to hold. A diary made of words, old pictures, drawings, recordings. A darkroom of sorts, where the act of revealing becomes one of care. I want to invent a space where the narrative of abuse is not reduced to victimhood but becomes a visual, political, and poetic process of elaboration. A way to regain our own memories and surroundings. A “cartography of silence and resistance,” highlighting how trauma transcends cultural and social boundaries. No matter how hard the mind tries to erase certain events, the body still remembers. Child sexual abuse is painfully spread: 20% of adult females and 10% of adult males recall an abusive incident within their safety perimeters. The pain, through the reveling power of truth, can be transformed in strength and enlightenment breaking the chain of silence. Survivors are precious witnesses for the whole society, a bridge toward healing for everyone directly and indirectly involved.

Jasmine & Gasoline reimagines the cyclical pattern of descent and return in the myth of Persephone. This time, she breaks free. These images read as her notes from paradise, tracing her escape from emotional underworlds toward a deeper sense of being at home within herself. Photographed along coastlines and urban edges, the series portrays a charged reunion with the tender natural world. Water, light, and touch guide Persephone toward a self-defined way of being. A faint trace of pomegranate lingers, like the myth she outgrows. A beetle suggests the path of metamorphosis. A figure entering the sea marks the crossing into a self once cast aside. Moving fluidly between documentary observation, self-portraiture, and landscape, the photographs slip between clarity and abstraction, using focused details to reveal how identity loosens and reforms. The sea becomes both a site of arrival and transformation, a place where something long buried resurfaces. Rather than framing home as a fixed place, Jasmine & Gasoline imagines Persephone’s homecoming as finding a home within herself, beyond the cycles that once bound her. In this atmosphere, the camera becomes a site of reawakening, rehearsing a quiet utopia of rest, renewal, and internal bloom.

Ariana Zukowski is a Canadian visual artist working between the West Coast and Europe. Her practice creates photographic worlds where inner and outer landscapes blur, opening spaces to find home through imagined utopias. Blending photography, sound, and language, she builds lyrical layers shaped by gesture, abstraction, and memory. By embracing multiplicity, her work approaches personal myth as a collective mirror, remixing form and meaning through figures, cities, and natural environments. Within a naturalistic lens, these tender futures become places to rest, transform, and return to.

This body of work explores the unstable relationship between the body, domestic space, and architectural environments, tracing how both physical and psychological boundaries are constructed, inhabited, and ultimately destabilised. Across photography, sculpture, and installation, Dudek develops a visual language in which interiors and bodies become interchangeable—spaces take on fleshy, visceral qualities, while the body itself is abstracted, fragmented, and reconfigured.
Through staged and observed environments, the work examines residues of presence—stains, organic traces, and material discharges—as markers of lived experience, trauma, and transformation. Bathrooms, housing blocks, and interior surfaces are rendered as liminal zones: sites of containment that simultaneously suggest rupture, alienation, and transition. These spaces, typically associated with intimacy and shelter, are reimagined as uncanny landscapes where absence becomes palpable and the boundaries between inside and outside begin to dissolve.
Central to the practice is an investigation of the body as both a physical limit and a psychological constraint. Skin operates as a recurring metaphor—at once protective and permeable—mirrored in the textures of walls, latex, concrete, and synthetic materials. The visual parallels drawn between architectural surfaces and human flesh evoke a sense of claustrophobia, suggesting bodies confined within systems, and systems that echo the vulnerabilities of the body itself.
Referencing ideas of distorted scale, containment, and expansion, the work reflects on the tension between growth and restriction—between the desire to exceed imposed limits and the forces that regulate and structure existence. Mass housing, domestic interiors, and bodily forms are all treated as sites where control, intimacy, and displacement intersect.
By exposing the fractures within both the body and the built environment, Dudek’s work questions notions of belonging, stability, and habitation. It positions the viewer within a suspended state—between presence and absence, interior and exterior, body and space—inviting a contemplation of how we inhabit not only physical structures, but also our own fragile, shifting selves.

Lost in Translation investigates how familiar American landscapes, monuments, and cultural rituals become sites of contemporary pilgrimage and spiritual projection. The series explores contemporary image culture, and examines how everyday places – whether encountered through travel, folklore, or digital circulation – carry traces of collective longing for connection, meaning, and ritual, revealing a shared yearning for a contemporary sublime. Lamb creates digital collages utilizing a plethora of social media photographs from the most-tagged locations in each U.S. State. In her experimental practice, Lamb reimagines and recontextualizes ubiquitous source material from publicly available archives into unique works. She translates these collages into photographic glass plates, known as ambrotypes, by employing an analog wet-plate collodion process. The resulting images are backed by gradients derived from colors in the source photographs, and appear as seamless scenes from afar, but dissolve into glitches, layers, and ghostly echoes upon closer inspection. The tension between analog and digital, single image and media stream, interrogates how contemporary imaging technologies blur public and private realms, shaping collective visual narratives that celebrate, mediate, and perpetuate human experience. In particular, this project asks how participants on social media platforms interpret recurring themes and negotiate personal experience in the physical world through the creation, dissemination and consumption of digital images. The source photographs themselves embody a collective urge to visit celebrated places, and to document and share the experience within an ever-growing public archive. By turning personal pilgrimages into public signposts, the images map a shared appetite for the sublime, while transforming individual travel into a communal visual language.

Bree Lamb is an artist, educator and editor based in New Mexico. She is Associate Professor of Photography at New Mexico State University, and holds a BFA from Pennsylvania State University, and an MFA from the University of New Mexico. Her work is held in permanent collections at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center, the University of Iowa, Arizona State University, the New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum, the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza Italy, and the Southwest Center for Research. Since 2014, Lamb has been the Co-Managing Editor for Fraction Magazine, an online venue for contemporary photography. She has reviewed portfolios at national and international events including Review Santa Fe, Medium Festival of Photography, Mt. Rokko Photography Festival, Month of Photography Denver, New England Portfolio Reviews, the Society for Photographic Education National Conference, and Photolucida. Her creative practice examines, challenges, and interprets social conventions by utilizing and reimagining ubiquitous objects and methods within vernacular and commercial photographic spaces. She is particularly focused on the complexities of identity, domesticity, and consumerism, and the performances inherent to these domains. Her work looks at our shared impulses and subconscious desires to identify, connect and indulge through image and object, as well as the inherent complications of contemporary vernacular photography.

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