Echoes

Echoes

by Náhir Capêlo

Nas transformações e interações entre matérias existe algo de muito interior, algo que vem de dentro e regressa de fora. Torna-se difícil definir extremidades e limites entre as coisas. Entre aquilo que rodeia e aquilo que é rodeado, aquilo que contém e o que é contido, entre a lava e a rocha ou entre o mar e a poça.

Bio

Náhir Capêlo frequentou o Curso de Artes Visuais - Fotografia da Escola Superior Artística do Porto (2015-2018) e o mestrado em Artes Plásticas- Intermédia da FBAUP. Participou no ciclo de performances de Hamish Fulton organizado pela Mezzanine no Porto (2017). Integrou as exposições coletivas "Do Not Touch Fresh Paint" (2018) com curadoria de Juan Luis Toboso no Espaço Mira; "Playlist #25" (2018) projeto curatorial de Nuno Ramalho no Café Candelabro; na exposição "Da utilidade e desvantagem da história para a vida" (2019) com curadoria de Eduarda Neves (Ci.Clo Bienal de Fotografia do Porto). Integra o projecto curatorial DA ABSTRACÇÃO [ou a ocupação em demasia com um objecto].

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nahi.ir/

Devotional

Devotional

by Fernando Maselli

Devotional is a documentary project that explores the places, practices, and structures of popular religiosity in Argentina. It delves into the phenomenon of spontaneous canonizations of apocryphal saints and the collective acceptance of certain sites as sacred. This project serves as a catalog of dissident architectures and offerings, reflecting contemporary mestizo religiosity.

In Latin America, following European colonization, a unique religious syncretism emerged as a result of the blending of diverse cultures in these regions. In Argentina, this syncretism found particular significance in remote and marginalized areas of the northwest, where many indigenous cultures were decimated due to Spanish evangelization. This setting, combined with the influences of African religions and gaucho folklore, created fertile ground for the emergence of numerous popular cults.

These cults often revolve around real individuals who lived in these regions and, owing to circumstances related to their lives or deaths, have been elevated to the status of saints with the perceived ability to perform miracles.

While it's challenging to categorize these popular saints strictly, there are some common themes among these devotions. For instance, figures like Difunta Correa or Gilda, who met tragic ends, are seen as embodying sanctity through enduring suffering. Others, such as Miguel Ángel Gaitán and Pilarcita, who died prematurely, are revered as "little angels," while Gauchito Gil and Bailoretto represent defiance against established authority. These cults express their devotion in ways reminiscent of Christianity, including prayers, touching and kissing of images, pilgrimages to their burial sites, lighting candles, offering flowers, and making votive offerings or fulfilling promises.

The sanctuaries themselves, like the cults they represent, are characterized by their collective, heterodox, and mestizo nature. These structures are built through generous donations, often using recycled materials, and they differ significantly from institutional sacred geometry or standardized monumentality. These profane sanctuaries stand as intricate and multifaceted visual evidence of spontaneous religiosity, offering a genuine reflection of the customs and concerns of the people in these regions.

Votive offerings also hold significant importance in these devotions. Consequently, these communal architectures are adorned with a myriad of diverse objects, representing the heartfelt expressions of those who participate in these unique religious practices.

Bio

Born in Buenos Aires, Fernando Maselli initially pursued Fine Arts and later relocated to Madrid, where he currently resides. His work has earned numerous accolades and has been showcased on the global stage, including exhibitions at prestigious venues such as the Copenhagen Photo Festival (Denmark), Guernsey Photography Festival (UK), PHotoESPAÑA (Madrid), International Biennial of Photography Fotonoviembre (Spain), Foto Museo Cuatro Caminos (Mexico), PhotoImagen Photography Festival (Dominican Republic), W-CA Contemporary Landscape Photography Open (UK), NordArt (Germany), SCAN Tarragona International Photography Festival (Spain), Lima International Book Fair (Peru), Youth Arts Award Complutense University (Madrid), ITAÚ Fine Arts Award (Argentina), University of Navarra Museum (Spain), and Contemporary Art Museum of Coruña (Spain). Additionally, he has authored two books, one of which is part of the esteemed Kursala collection at the University of Cádiz.

In recent years, the core focus of Fernando Maselli's artistic practice has centered on extensive research into diverse interpretations of landscapes across various cultures and historical eras. For Maselli, the act of photography is both an action and an immersive, emotional experience. Through journeys to remote locales, he translates his fascination with notions of "nature" into dynamic interpretations that encompass themes of beauty, the sublime, human architectural interaction, and the sacred. Throughout his career, he has drawn inspiration from classical painting, literature, Western aesthetics, and philosophy.

Website: https://www.fernandomaselli.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fernando.maselli/

Encounters

Encounters

by Boris Snauwaert

“Encounters” is a loose, slowly growing collection of portraits I made throughout the years. Here’s a few of them.

I love how a photographic portrait can be a document of the interaction between the person(s) standing before the lens and the photographer. A small record of an encounter.

There is so much to read in a portrait.

Bio

Boris Snauwaert is a photographer living and working in Gent, Belgium.

Website: https://svartdal.format.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vogelmuur/

Far Away From The Place Where You Are

Far Away From The Place Where You Are

by David egan

This work is a response to my own personal anxieties and desires to be alone. It is about a search and struggle to find a safe space. It is about home, it is about my love of nature and want to be in it, it is about connecting to something, it is about loss, it is about repetition, it is calm, it is about life and death, it is about a destination.

Over time I have come to realize that the area that I have chosen to return to and photograph represents those feelings for not just me but many people. All of the photographs from this series were made in and around the Salton Sea, in Southern California. Once a bustling vacation destination of the 1960’s and 1970’s, it has slowly become a place that is struggling to survive. The sea itself is evaporating and filled with dead fish and birds. There is a smell in the air. There are unruly people that want to be left alone. There are homes and structures that have been abandoned. It is occupied by a lot of people looking to avoid societal norms as well as those who just can’t afford to live anywhere else. It is one of the hottest places in the country. It is an unstable desert landscape. It is beautiful.

Bio

David Egan is an American photographer raised in the Washington metropolitan area now residing in Los Angeles, California. He creates long-term bodies of work focusing on the changing American landscape. Egan is primarily known for his large format long exposure color night landscape work in the state of Nevada. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States.

Website: https://www.egandavid.com/

Instagram: http://instagram.com/baronegan

The mooring island

The mooring island

by Bartolomeo Rossi

I traveled to Iceland driven by a force that carried me north to try to understand why in a landscape completely foreign to me, I felt at home, protected by the walls of an imaginary refuge. Without giving me answers, I realized that this land has managed to ignite the sparks of memory in me, stimulating my unconscious to recognize places and objects as familiar even though I met them for the first time on my journey. So traces have become signs, objects have become childhood memories and an unknown land has become home.

This is the story of my relationship with the island; land of "ancient solitude" as Manganelli defines it on his book Isola Pianeta, it is this feeling of solitude, not sought but somehow necessary, that carried me along the endless coasts of the west fjords.

The path I trace guides me inside this refuge made of land and sea, finally aware that home has never been so close.

Bio

Bartolomeo Rossi (1993) is an Italian photographer. From 2017 to 2019 he attended the master's degree in contemporary image at Fondazione Modena Arti Visive, which ended with the acquisition of his diploma project Camera Mia by the foundation’ collection. In 2015 he meets Iceland and his landscapes, which lead him to return to the island for the following five years. The project The mooring island develops from these trips.

His research has always been centered on the landscape and on the intimate and private perception of it, with a particular interest in the roots that bind an individual to his imaginary.

Website: https://www.bartolomeorossi.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bartolomeeo/

Eure

Eure

by Ben Osborne

Eure is an ongoing project that has grown out of a number of visits to the department of Eure in Normandy in Northwestern France. The project focuses on the landscape and rural villages within the department.

Bio

Ben Osborne is a photographer who lives in East Sussex, England. 

Website: https://www.benjaminosborne.co/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/b.e.n.osborne/

Walk by day because night is ours

Walk by day because night is ours

by Alejandra Vacuii

Galicia, a Spanish region in the Northwest, is a territory of myths and superstitions that go back to the night of time. One of these legends is La Santa Compaña, a procession of souls led by a living person with a cross who goes out every night through the woods announcing death. There is only one way to get rid of their curse: meet another living person and give them the cross. In the sepulchral silence that occurs as it appears, it can only be heard from time to time some soul screaming "walk by day because the night is ours!".

Today, pessimism and hopelessness seem to have settled in Western societies as a response to the economic, health, ecological and moral crises that we have been chaining for years. As hauntology predicted, there is a general feeling that the future has been cancelled: we can no longer imagine a better future, the idea of progress has disappeared, and instead of feeling that the world is improving it seems that we are headed towards disaster without warning. The fear floats in the air as if something terrible is going to happen, is the end of the world near?

Walk by day because the night is ours tells the metaphorical story of this omen. Through the legend of La Santa Compaña, which has been a warning that death was near when the Galician people still believed in the supernatural, this project tells us about this pessimistic hunch that is contaminating our current feeling. Something dark, mournful and terrible is about to happen. Like the people who were with La Santa Compaña in the middle of a dark and silent forest, we are being warned of the arrival of death. 

Bio

Alejandra Vacuii (1987) is a Spanish visual artist based in A Coruña (Spain). She is graduated in Artistic Photography and has completed her MA in Photographic Creation at Escuela Lens where she was awarded with a scholarship in 2021. In her work, she's looking for a poetic space where she can express herself through dense and mysterious images. Her projects revolve around abstract sensations and emotions such as loss, melancholy, nostalgia or anxiety. 

She has participated in multiple exhibitions in Europe since 2009 (Istanbul, Berlin, Madrid). Her work has been reviewed in numerous digital media (Fisheye Magazine, Phroom Platform, C41 Magazine, Sola Journal). She has been selected to participate in photo festivals such as Getxophoto, Descubrimientos PHotoESPAÑA, SCAN Tarragona or Imaginària. She has publish her work in different collective publications and recently her project La Mala Fortuna was published by UFCA Collective (2023) as a printed work in the fanzine Fotofobia. 

Website: https://www.alejandravacuii.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lamalafortuna/

Our Hidden Room

Our Hidden Room

by Mohamed Hassan

"Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness." 

Caruth, C.

Our Hidden Room.

As an artist with dual nationality, this project explores my identity as part of an ever-expanding diasporic community based in Wales.  I draw inspiration from the memory of my complex yet loving relationship with my father. I reflect on his own personal struggle with bipolar disorder, made clear to me by his erratic, reclusive, behaviour and his obsession with the small dark room, hidden within our family home.

Through my lens, I seek to explore the complexity of the human experience and the legacy of a traumatic and uncertain childhood, of living within a fragile environment and the desire to escape memories. My personal conflict about belonging is represented through the people I meet and the lands that I explore, both in Egypt and Wales. The constant feeling of displacement and questions of identity are forever present.

Bio

Originally from Alexandria, I have been living and working in Pembrokeshire, in west Wales in the UK since 2007, graduating with a 1st class honours degree in Photography from Carmarthen School of Art in 2016. I have been shortlisted for several awards and competitions and my work has been exhibited at the prestigious Mission Gallery, the Waterfront National Museum in Wales the Trajectory Showcase Competition Exhibition in Shoreditch, London, Nova Cymru 2018 and had a portrait included in the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait exhibition 2018 at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

More recently I am exhibiting 4 images in 'Facing Britain', curated by Ralph Goertz at Kunsthalle Darmstadt Museum Goch - touring to Koslar and Krakow in 2022. In Wales, the Many Voices, One Nation 2' supported by the Senedd and exhibiting at Ffotogallery included 11 of my images and 5 images at Oriel Davies in the Responding to Rembrandt exhibition.

Website: https://www.mohamedhassanphotography.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mohamed_hassan.photo/

Mycophilia

Mycophilia

by Nika Sandler

In "The Romance of the Fungus World", researchers Rolfe write that in literature, folklore and science, fungus are often associated with pestilence, death and decay, and their physicality appears creepy and repulsive. In this series, I move away from the mycophobic images of fungoid entities in terms of conventional ideas and show their ability to be creative and hospitable. I depict fungus as being like unearthly creatures, as in myths and theories about their cosmic origin.

Bio

Nika Sandler is an artist working with photography and text. She explores the themes of human and non-human gaze, gender, pleasure, creepy and disgusting. She was published in the magazines i-D, Libération, Der Greif, Phroom Platform, Calvert Journal, Metal Magazine, L'Oeil de la Photographie, BROAD, Bird in Flight, FK Magazine, F-STOP, Float Magazine, ect. She is also the winner of the Small File Photo Festival 2023 organized by The Photographers' Gallery.

Website: https://sites.google.com/view/nikasandler/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nika.sandler/?hl=pt

Born and Raised

Born and Raised

by Vlad Bulenkov

As a child, I thought that when I become an adult, I would also have children. And back then it seemed that this moment was very far away, and as if it would never come. I did not imagine myself as someone else, someone bigger and more important than I am. Now I am still the same as I was when I was 31 years old. But there is a feeling of anxiety and expectation from things familiar to the eye. Outwardly, nothing has changed, but everything seems to be different. Imminent changes excite me and inflame the atmosphere around me. And I feel like time is speeding up, the gap between me and me in the new role of a father is shortening. I’ve heard a lot from friends about what it’s like to have a baby. Now I can only imagine what will await me in the future after my son is born.

Bio

Vlad Bulenkov is a visual artist. He was born in Leningrad, based in St. Petersburg. He studied at the faculty of photojournalists named after. Yu.A. Galperin and the school of modern photography Docdocdoc. He is a participant of group exhibitions and a finalist of international competitions.

Website: https://vbulenkov.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deubrazil/

AFAR

AFAR

by Büşra Kuzu

A child who tried to start over every time but couldn't break away from the past as she kept trying to recall all of it, all over again. Despite her poor memory, she is always on the lookout for the best capture she can memorize. She is a distant watcher; seeking, tracking, and observing from afar.

Bio

Büşra Kuzu is a 25-year-old photographer who also likes to call herself a "visual experiencer". Not like any other people, she takes pleasure in delving into the past, making real stories out of it with what she photographs today. She's been also writing about mental imagery - mental representation and how these are related to photographic images, which she hopes one day she can turn into a comprehensive work. 

Website: https://busrakuzu.net/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/busrakuzuu/

Wavering

Wavering

by Josef Kovac

Oscillating between real and surreal, fighting with loneliness and longing for deeper human connection. Moments of epiphany get rarer and searching for them becomes an obsession, that rush of happiness and satisfaction that floods the brain for a moment is addictive and becomes another emotional longing. The constant remnants of unpleasant personality traits from the past, those that you thought had disappeared with maturity. Up and down, up and down like a rollercoaster seeming to move forward towards the void of a future but feeling caught in an unbreakable repetitive loop.

Artist statement

Bio

Josef Kovac (*1982, former Czechoslovakia) is a photographer and artist currently situated in Gothenburg, Sweden. He pursued his photography education at the Institute of Technology in Dublin, Ireland, as well as at the HDK-Valand Academy of Art and Design in Gothenburg, Sweden. Kovac’s artistic focus lies in exploring the dynamic between photographic images and fiction. He achieves this by transforming everyday objects and spaces into new narratives, thereby prompting a reevaluation of how these elements interact. Through his work, Kovac challenges our perceptions of the relationship between photographs and fictional storytelling, using ordinary subjects to create new imaginative contexts.

Website: https://josefkovac.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/josef_kovac/

Iceland Ahoy!

Iceland Ahoy!

by Przemyslaw Mioduszewski

I always want to capture surroundings and my personal life on camera. Most of the photographs show me in raw surroundings where I fight for survival, becoming wild and mismatched in the nature with an absolute inability to find myself in a rough terrain.

Artist statement

Bio

I was born in Łapy, a small town in east Poland and moved to USA at age fourteen. First New York and them I made my way west, to California. After sixteen years, working as a carpenter, jeweler, jazz radio persona and sixty other different jobs I went back to Poland where I became a seaman on a cargo ship. That became load of a job at some point so I tried to settle up for a while in Iceland. I spend half a year working both as a fisherman and a lifeguard in Icelandic village in the north and another half in Poland.

Website: http://suddenweatherchange.com/info/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/przemyslaw.mioduszewski/

Fordlândia 9

Fordlândia 9

by JM Ramírez-Suassi

The Amazon is much more than a river. It is the visible appearance, infinitely rich in analogies, of the reality of things. This seems obvious, when poetic languages intervene to describe reality, the latter loses its documentary sharpness and is converted into a creative fantasy, especially in the specific sense that the river embodies the ironic and sombre essence of the universe.

I have contemplated this river and its affluents in small doses, and small steps, because like a bashful child, it only showed its epidermis; this I found irritating. But traveling so sedately meant that all that surrounded me remained hidden until the river itself disgorged all its “splendours” along its various stretches: globetrotters, beggars, preachers, drunken aborigines, ruined foremen, minor politicians, lumberjacks, monks, soldiers, melancholic prostitutes... I find it strange that the beautiful image of this river, is in reality a beautiful imperfection. Conversely Fordlândia, Henry Ford’s attempt to transform the jungle into a fantasy of the American Mid West, is the perfect imperfection: a perfect failure of the American Way of Life.

Artist statement

Bio

JM Ramírez-Suassi was born in Mallorca (Spain) and now lives and works in Madrid. His photographs, which at first sight appears to fit seamlessly into the great nowhere, involve many visits to the same landscapes to observe the change year after year. His work occupies an ambiguous position somewhere between portraiture and social landscape. Has published the photobook One Eyed Ulysses (2018) and Fordlândia 9 (2020). Is a self-taught.

Website: https://www.ramirezsuassi.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jmsuassi/

Unutursan Darılmam

Unutursan Darılmam

BY Ci Demi

Unutursan Darılmam (No Offence If You Forget, 2018 - 2023) is a photobook project about clinging to Istanbul and rediscovering life after a three-year-long depression.

Artist statement

Bio

I was born in Beyoglu, Istanbul on July 6th,1986. I studied Italian Language And Literature at Istanbul University. Following that, I worked for advertising agencies as copywriter and creative director for many years. I was 28 when I discovered visual story-telling. I did music photography and photojournalism for a while, then I decided to devote my time solely on my own stories. 

My work is focused on Istanbul and its personal psychogeographies. Adopting documentary as secondary function, I tell stories using the scenes of my city. My distinct color palette is a derivation of the look of Italian giallos of '70s, and I take clues from the cinematography of classic horror films in my visual language. All of my photographs take place in the daytime.

Website: https://cidemi.art/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ci_demi/