FIG001 – Borders and boundaries QR CODE

P4, 5  –  Christie Fedorak  –  The Soil

The Soil is a project that explores how wheat grows from a small grain into fragrant bread, while also examining our deep, often unconscious, connection with the world around us. The soil symbolizes the timeline from which I, my parents, and my grandparents emerged, reflecting the person I am becoming.
In this project, The Soil represents the primordial soup containing the rudiments of our ancestors’ existence—the DNA that weaves together the vast reaches of outer space and the rich, black soil of Earth. It signifies a time fixed in irreversibility, intersecting with the horizon that fades into the rusty mist of infinity.
Through a combination of digital and analog techniques, cyanotype, photography, and a rich tapestry of family archive photos, I delve into themes of growth, interconnectedness, and ancestral heritage. This collage project transcends the mere transformation of wheat into bread, using soil as a metaphorical foundation—the primordial soup from which we, as seeds, emerged. It highlights the delicate balance between past and present, emphasizing the importance of timing and form in the chaotic dance of life’s origins.

The Soil is a journey of introspection, drawing from the subconscious to reveal my identity. It represents work that closes the circle and teaches us to let go and receive—acknowledging the people I have lost and the time I will never get back. The imagery captures the irreversibility of time and the ever-fading horizon of infinity, reflecting the subtle interplay between our ancestral roots and our present selves.
This project invites reflection on the boundaries that define who we are now and who we were as seeds long before our birth. By embracing the lessons embedded in our personal histories, I aim to convey the beauty of impermanence and the resilience that comes from recognizing our place within the grand tapestry of existence.

Through this project I seek to express the significance of being in the right form at the right time, capturing the essence of life’s chaotic yet beautiful process of becoming.

P6, 9  –  Antonina Baygusheva  –  Ultima Thule

Ultima Thule is a legendary island described by the Greek traveler Pytheas in his work “On the Ocean”. No one knows for sure which island Pytheas meant and whether it really existed. But one of the versions is the archipelago of the Faroe Islands. Ultima Thule metaphorically means limit, edge, boundary.

In this project I used archival photos I took in the Faroe Islands during an artist residency in 2004. I placed them in the interior of the office of a Berlin-based company I worked for last year. It was my way of escaping from reality and trying to create my own fantasy island through photography, collage, installation.

P10, 11  –  Mark Veljkovich

Set of two landscape photographs incorporating separation safety barrier.

P12, 15  –  Linda Zhengová  –  Maybe, Happiness Is…

In the project, I am preoccupied with the questions: What does happiness mean? What is the emblem of uttermost freedom? Can we even describe it in words or perhaps through photography?It started in May 2022 when I made a radical decision to move out of my studio in the Hague without necessarily knowing the reason behind it. I just knew that I didn’t feel happy. I moved to Amsterdam instead and nomadically transported myself to different places. These circumstances enabled me to open myself to novel energies and encounters. Let’s say affective encounters with strangers, pure moments…

Since then, I have been transgressing geographical borders to search for happiness yet mingling on the thin line of sanity and madness. In my quest for joy, I present a contradiction, an intangible idea to reflect upon.

P16, 21  –  Nurlana Udovenko  –  Incomplete Presence

Incomplete presence is a work built on the idea of suppressed anxiety. When you cannot keep your mind in a relaxed or focused state and thoughts about insecurity always accompany you in the background. It expresses the decision to hide, the inability to take even an observer part. The heroes of this series are young people from Dnipro. Students, artists, engineers, volunteers, mothers, happily married, and happily single merge into a collective masked figure in hibernation. Everyone expects a way out of it and does everything possible to make it happen.

P22, 25  –  Berto Herrera  –  Omnipresence

Beneath the digital glow and within the confines of modern technology, we wrestle with the overwhelming presence of the virtual world, turning personal experiences of burnout and isolation into a critical exploration of contemporary life.

Once holding a high leadership position, this journey shifted from the pursuit of corporate success to a profound examination of my own unhealthy relationship with technology at the height of the pandemic. Immersed in endless scrolls of clickbait news and digital noise, I found myself trapped within the seductive yet suffocating grasp of screens, exploring the very tools that shape our understanding of the world.Isolated and confined to a 5km radius, I turned these constraints into a medium for expression, using YouTube live feeds, subreddit threads, and hacked security cameras as portals to examine human behavior and global dynamics.

Through macrophotography and digital manipulation, I brought to life the moiré patterns and interference that symbolize the duplicity of everyday objects, creating a visual language that captures the tension between connection and isolation, freedom and confinement. This work challenges us to confront our own relationships with technology, urging us to question the comfort we find in the digital abyss and to seek meaning beyond the screens that dominate our lives.

P26, 29  –  Eftychia Vlachou  –  Springs of a hundred affections

As humans, we are inherently connected to the cosmos, perceiving reality through our limited sensory receptors. However, there are moments when we undergo a kind of dissolution of the psychological and sensory boundaries of the self.”Springs of a Hundred Affections” is an expression of my artistic practice that I subconsciously follow to evoke the sensation of unity with the “external world”, akin to the consciousness of an infant who hasn’t yet distinguished itself from others and its surroundings.

In this project, I delve into the intricate dance between the natural forces and living beings, capturing fleeting constellations that emerge from their rhythmic interplay. Each image becomes a tapestry of motion, where the repetitive gestures of wind, water, and other elemental forces are woven seamlessly with the presence of organisms. Through careful observation, I seek to reveal the mystery and harmony in these transcendent moments, inviting viewers to contemplate the interconnectedness of all life forms and phenomena and reflect upon their relationship with the universe and the essence of our existence.

The title draws inspiration from Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself.”

P38, 41  –  Antigoni Papantoni  –  You can’t go home again

Born in a conservative, patriarchal context, I could not fit in in this environment’s expectations and had to go away. Ever since, I have been exploring what is a meaningful way to live in a dysfunctional society. Yet, wandering around the world, I realized that I have lost a sense of belonging.

Embracing my childhood wounds and understanding how they set the floor for more abuse, it is time for healing. I take agency for my experiences and dedicate myself in the creation of chosen families, based on compassion and harmony with the environment.

Nature offers unlimited possibilities of connection, embracing and reassuring me, unveiling hidden parts of my existence. Animals’ unfiltered trust, loyalty and gratitude are very inspiring. Simply watching them cater for their needs without guilt too.

In this process, I revisit the vast and omnivorous personal archive that I have created over the last ten years of nomadic life. My photography practice is intuitive, autobiographical and therapeutic, exploring the notions of home, belonging and identity. Photography becomes a meditative, analytical and humorous tool to externalize internal processes. The frame becomes an emancipation act per se, I choose what I see and how I perceive it. Curating and documenting what visual information I take in allows me to go back, process and connect with others, against the overwhelming realities and paces we live in.

By sharing my own journey from unfamiliarity to intimacy, I wish to invite viewers to develop critical thinking and compassion towards people’s common needs, while creating a world in which I undoubtedly belong, my world of images. Driven by the desire to free my consciousness from societal boundaries, while looking into the foundations of our togetherness, through my artistic practice I create for me the possibility to introspect and interpret my experience of life, share it with others, encourage them to do the same and build a hopeful future together where we all fit in.

P42, 45  –  Cheryl Newman  –  Last night we had the same dream, that the tree was missing

How can a photograph describe the passage of time? Last night we had the same dream, that the tree was missing has become an allegory for my history. I have been photographing the tree for many years; it is a constant a visual poem for the passing of time and for loss. Approaching the space and witnessing its disappearance has a profound effect on my image making. It is now a stage to revisit lost family, bringing with it memories of childhood, of relationships and friendships. Through intervention, using archive family images collaged together I bear witness to the ticking clock and use the space to bring magic and mythology to the ghosts that inhabit it.

My work is an exploration of the human condition creating landscapes of emotions, I reach back, bringing to life memories as memento mori. Photographed on 5×4 and medium format and printed on Awagami paper. The collages are photographs from my family archive and reveal my mother and aunts as brides, and me as the Good Girl, dressed in white printed on delicate fabrics as fragile as my memories.

P46, 49  –  Michaela Nagyidaiová  –  Transient Ties

Until I was about twenty-two, I wasn’t aware of the full story of how as a child, my grandmother Lenafled Greece and created a new life for herself in former communist Czechoslovakia. Lena’s uprootedness resulted from the Greek Civil War (1946-1949). She was never repatriated to her native environment in northern Greece and thus re-connected with the Macedonian minority, into which she was born.

’Transient Ties’ tells the story of my grandmother’s forced migration, who continues to live in Slovakia, where individuals are highly polarised on migration. Out of all the countries in Europe, Slovakia has the third lowest proportion of foreigners living in the country. ‘Transient Ties’ is a collaboration with my grandmother Lena and my mother, while exploring Lena’s identity as a former political refugee and the bonds between home, displacement, and cultural heritage.

The project is made of photographs and a short colour film (8 min 44 seconds, 2022-2023) and is situated between Greece and Slovakia. It explores Greece, the country my grandmother had to leave but also focuses on Slovakia, the country she had to embrace as her new home. It visualizes the fragility and impermanence of one’s connection to homeland after escaping it. Similarly, it analyses cutting ties with one’s birthplace, while integrating within a new environment.

P68, 71  –  Sarah Hinds  –  An ode to my family

This project consisted of three handmade zines, each sewn and collaged with my photography (both darkroom prints and digital), my family archive, and found imagery. While creating this work, I considered the emotional, historical, and physical boundaries of the home, and how home exists not only as a physical landscape but a landscape of memory and emotion. I printed many of my images in the darkroom or on alternative papers, like envelopes, archive cards, and other found papers I already owned to experiment with texture and layering.

P92, 95  –  Olha Lobazova  –  Kintsugi

Immigration feels like a complete unraveling of the self. Once you close the door of your home in the seek of a better life, new emotions or whatever it is out there, you are entering this endless race of finding the home again.

Sometimes I think about home as a place where I grew up and then childhood memories make you feel small and home feels so warm but distant. Sometimes I think about home as an abstract concept, both existing and non-existent simultaneously. A place I’m yet to create, where my family will find happiness and sanctuary.

Sometimes I dream about home as a place with no neighbours. And by saying so I mean neighbours in geopolitical sense. A life with no fear and anxiety. No threat of war, no need to raise a national awareness which later can become a basis for genocide conducted by the neighbour. And then I feel like there is more truth in fighting for the right to live with a volcano, not people.

But what I really have by now is a limbo. And my conscious is lost in finding the answers. Can returning home make things feel real again? Can I forge a home elsewhere on this planet without regretting my decision to immigrate? Is there truly a safe haven for me, or am I destined to never feel secure anywhere?

I am a broken vase and I need to fix the cracks in aspiration of non-attachment, acceptance of change, and fate.

Kintsugi.

P96, 97  –  Artur Leão  –  Descensus Ad Inferos

I dreamt of seeking a cave inhabited by a being that thrived on the expenditure of magical forces, treacherous and concealing its pernicious nature. When I first saw him, I realized that through his face, it was possible to pierce the celestial vault. Shocked, I tried to shield my senses from the hidden forces crafted by celestial architects, who unveiled reality’s veil, altering its curious hue in an almost supernatural instant.

At that moment, time stopped, and my lynx eye caught sight of sparse stalactites on the right side sliding down the rough dress from the left breast in a diagonal trajectory, possibly driven by the force of the zephyr, toward the pelvis, finally flowing to the fabric’s left edge. Suddenly, another entity emerged, stained with traces of blood, gazing intently at me. Painted like a corpse, covered in the ash of the dead, eyes streaked with the filaments of darkness, opened its mouth to utter the desires of heaven and earth, to call me to the Shambala, to the recesses of all existence. Surrendering, I abandoned my body and reason, following the footsteps of illusion. No human had ever pronounced their sentence near the golden shimmer of the water, divine to the sound of the swirling vortexes in the atmosphere, and so the dance of the divination lingered. Ultimately, I was transported to the heart of the forest, where the roots of the intertwined trees grow in abundance and form large shelters and ancient domes, and where the lianas cover the sky in phosphorescent green tones. In that moment, I felt the earth’s face tremble, yet I advanced into the darkness with indelible courage and faith.

P101, 102  –  Anaïs Jourdan  –  To Which I Am Doomed

This work explores my experiences within the Mormon religion and the profound effects it has had on me since leaving the church I was a part of for sixteen years. Capturing the guilt, fear and shame that is built into my being has become a way for me to navigate and overcome these emotions that remain present in my life today. My work focuses on self and identity and has given me the chance to liberate myself from an adolescence spent constrained by expectations imposed by religion. I am relearning what it means to be a woman beyond the “divine” duties of marriage and motherhood.

P104, 107  –  Yiannis Trifonopoulos  –  Beyond the Pale

Beyond the Pale: “Outside the bounds of acceptable behaviour”.

The phrase “Beyond the Pale” relates to a wall around Dublin called the Pale where English rule was based in the late Middle Ages. Everything and everyone outside Dublin was considered wild and uncivilized, a view some Dubliners still hold today. This series is an allegory that refers to the social stereotypes and prohibitions of today’s society

P122, 125  –  Sunny Attias  –  Signals

It is often the case that outer space and the cosmos are perceived through a scientific and technological filter, partly due to how our entire relationship to the cosmos is mediated by space agencies and government bodies. However, outer space and its celestial bodies are no less natural than any living organism on Earth. From city pigeons, to snowstorms, to the hair on your arms, to the gases of Jupiter, it all comes down to natural phenomena, and everything that seemed so distant and alien can in fact feel quite close indeed. With this shift in perspective, Signals aims to conjure the cosmos within the photography studio through human bodies and commonly found objects. By taking inspiration from “behind-the-scenes” images from NASA laboratories, the materiality present within them, and the space probes that are constructed there, the aim was to bring a sense of closeness and touch to a subject that is perceived to be so distant and out of reach.

P126, 131  –  Lars Kemnitz  –  Half Awake, Half Asleep

This series is from 2020, a time when the pandemic hit the world and within some days suddenly nothing was the same. Everyone was stuck at home. Suddenly where there was freedom yesterday, there where heavy borders on the next day. I felt somehow trapped in my little space. The outside world only existed through the internet. And creative exchange in person was reduced to chatting online. I didn’t feel good at that time (like most people). But it was also a gift, because it forced me to look for other ways to be creative. That’s how a collaboration developed between Mar, a model from Mexico, and me. We hadn’t known each other, but wanted to try something. And so we did probably the most unusual shooting I’ve ever done: we met via Skype, she in Mexico, me in Germany – hours and thousands of kilometers between us – and did a shooting with me sitting in front of my laptop with a DSLR camera capturing the screen and her improvising in front of her laptop. What we wanted to tell was a story of loneliness that really matches the feeling of being trapped, of being with oneself, slowly having visions and fantasies and drifting towards a dreamlike state of mind. In the end we were both surprised by the expressiveness of the pictures. They were dark and a little bit scary. For me, still today, they capture the atmosphere of these days back then very well. And they are still proof that overcoming borders is possible. And can lead to exceptional stories.

Model: Mar Castañedo

P132, 137  –  Emilia Martin  –  I saw a tree bearing stones in the place of apples and pears

“How sad, is it not, to see a whole municipality attempt to certify the truth of folk tales… the philosophical reader will draw his own conclusions regarding this document, which attests to an apparently false fact, a physically impossible phenomenon.” wrote Pierre Bertholon, editor of the Journal des Sciences utile in Montpellier, after three hundred inhabitants of the Barbotan village attested to having witnessed meteorite showers on the night of 24th of July 1790.

It was only in the late 18th century when modern science acknowledged the fact that cosmic rocks were falling from the sky. Before then meteorites were seen as tales made up by peasants who entertained themselves during long hours of work, or as fictional stories belonging to native communities.

And yet, the voice of three hundred people, disregarded by Bartholon and a wider scientific society, bore truth: Cosmic stones, unruffled by Western science, indeed travelled from a distant space to crash through the atmosphere and pay Earthly visits, often to be witnessed not by the scientists sheltered under their roofs but by field workers labouring under the bare sky.

Once modern science acknowledged the meteorites as fact and no longer as myth, the narrative around the cosmic rocks shifted. They gained the status of otherworldly and therefore valuable. They were taken away from the places they had fallen onto, removed from the communities that embedded them into their mythologies and placed in cold glass museum containers. A meteorite is now a core subject in scientific research that investigates the beginnings of life or explores the structures and chemical compounds present in the galaxy and yet, it belongs as much to myths and folktales as it does to science. There, seen first and foremost not as a complex compound or as an astronomical occurrence, but as a carrier of stories: a cosmic relic.

Perceived as a fictional myth throughout the majority of human history, fuelled by the disregard for its first hand witnesses, subversively, the cosmic rock through its silence speaks volumes.

P154, 157  –  Nadezda Nikolova  –  Elemental Forms

The abstract landscape series, Elemental Forms: Landscape emerged as the artist’s direct response to her surroundings and to feeling a sense of well-being and security within the landscape. She believes that each locale has its specific identity, history, and emotional imprint. Her aim with this series is to record intangible aspects of the landscape, as she experiences them through immersion and observation. The photogram as a medium allows the artist to search for the essence of the place by using simplicity and abstraction. By reinterpreting wet plate collodion, a 19th century process, and reducing photography to its essential components, the artist has created a unique visual vocabulary suggestive of landscapes that exist outside of space and time.

P158, 159  –  Klim Kutsevskyy  –  forming forms facing figures

The images are from an ongoing series about the body, its form and how we perceive and objectify it.

P160, 161  –  Chelsea Ning  –  Misplaced

My photographs purposefully leave much to the imagination. Soft, blurred, and occasionally cropped, these scenes, as if they are a part of my memories, unfold like fragments of narratives for which a complete story is always just out of reach. I purposefully erases or obscures parts of the view, curtailing the viewer’s ability to fully comprehend the subjects yet allowing them to find their own way through imagined scenes.

I often focuses on reflections and mirrors, suggesting the way in which reflections portray an inverted vision of what one presents to the world and suggesting that “the environments and representations of ourselves are created and abstract rather than objective. It implies that our perception is the leading part that decides how we feel and what is happening in our mind.

”Themes of displacement and mirage weave through my images, lead to a practice in which I constantly challenges my surroundings and consider my personal identity as a minority, yet eagerly searching for more possibilities for recognition.

Windows, mirrors, and glossy paint serve as portals as much as barriers to clarity. Through studies of distortion, the objectivity of reflections becomes blurred and skewed, my work invites the viewer to interpret each scene based on their own emotions, associations, and experiences in the world. “What does my surroundings truly look like?” I hope that I can keep thinking about it.

P176, 179  –  J.B.E. Mclean  –  Radius

A psychogeographic exploration of the detailed emergency planning zone[1] around the proposed site of Sizewell C nuclear power station.

This small circle of land is charged with meaning from the many ideas, stories and icons it contains: encompassing the great achievements alongside the threats and consequences of the “Anthropocene”.

St. Augustine said “…and it is solved by walking”, Iris Murdoch tells us that “attention is rewarded by a knowledge of reality”. By walking and paying attention solely within the 4km radius around the power stations 15 local tales; big and small, heroic, innovative, charming and tragic were explored in depth.

Using the psychogeographic methodology of “standing in place”created what Ana Samoylova calls a “speculative archive” over two years of returning repeatedly. Using these pictures to accrete cubist layers the objective was to avoid the picturesque and show instead the multiple narratives and complex “reality”.

[1] Suffolk resilience forum defines three radii for emergency planning in the event of a nuclear accident or terrorist incident:

Detailed emergency planning zone (DEPZ) 3-4km radius

Extended emergency planning zone 15km radius

Outline emergency planning zone 30km radius

P180, 183  –  Laure d’Utruy  –  The Elephant in the Room

Omar, also known as WeirDo, expresses his personality and his art to defy the physical and psychological boundaries imposed by his disability and society. Diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy at the age of 9, WeirDo navigates life with the constraints of his condition, relying on a wheelchair and assistance for daily tasks. Despite these limitations, he refuses to let them define him. Instead, he embraces his difference, adopting the name WeirDo as a statement of empowerment rather than a mark of shame. In Egypt, where public spaces are barely inclusive, WeirDo faces stigma and prejudice that often marginalize and isolate those with disabilities. With his distinctive style, he breaks through societal borders, expressing his individuality and challenging conventional norms.

His work and character are a testament to his resilience and his fight for disability rights, inclusion, and the representation of diversity. This project aims to depict WeirDo not as someone to be pitied but as a figure of strength and rebellion. By capturing moments of his daily life and creating metaphorical images, the series seeks to reveal the depths of his spirit, his ambitions, and his unwavering determination to live life on his own terms. It invites viewers to open up and look beyond stereotypes.

P184, 185 –  Theo Belov  –  Alienation

This documentation captures the performance that was filmed to later be displayed as a 5-channel HD video installation.In my artistic practice, I explore existence within power structures, the tension between conformity and nonconformity, and strategies of resistance and self-preservation. The inspiration for this work came from a post I read in which a young woman described her experience living with OCD. She recounted how, as a child, in a quest for unattainable perfection, she repeatedly trimmed her eyelashes with nail scissors until none remained. This narrative profoundly moved me, compelling me to recreate and experience this act myself—the stark mismatch with the outer world and the fleeting sense of liberation and relief it provided.

P212, 217  –  Raisan Hameed

These photos of the family pictures were damaged in one of the wars that took place in Iraq, they fell from the wall and the glass took the layers of the photograph. My family kept these photos in a small box, and many years later I got these photos. Zer-Störung tells the story of different periods in Mosul – the city of the artist’s birth. The starting point for the project was photographic material from Hameed’s family archive as well as his own photographs taken in Mosul. As carriers of memories, these images have visible and invisible layers; an observation that is already expressed in the title. A play on words, the English translation of “Zerstörung” is “destruction”, describing the brutal damage that man inflicts on the world, his environment and other people. “Störung”, in turn, translates to “irritation” – a term that Hameed connects to the impermanence of things. The artist uses abstraction as a strategy to break down the original function of the images, changing the way in which they are read.By focusing on the materiality of images in Zer-Störung, observations and their political contexts are transformed.They become a metaphorical documentation of past, present and future. The process allows for the opening of doors, negotiation, reflection and exchange.

P230, 233  –  Alice Jankovic  –  Spaesaggio

“You do not live in a neutral and white space; you do not live, you do not die, you do not love within the rectangle of a sheet of paper. You live, you die, you love in a checkered, cut-out, variegated space, with bright and dark areas, unevenness, steps, hollows, and protrusions, with some regions being hard and others fragile, penetrable, porous.” Paul-Michel Foucault.

The “spaesaggio” represents a distant elsewhere, freed from human elements, but still a constant and nonexistent presence. It can be created anywhere and everything contained within it solely adheres to its intrinsic nature. By examining the garden through the inspiration of Foucault’s philosophical theories on “counter spaces” and “heterotopias,” and according to the concept of “Third Landscape” theorized by Gilles Clement, we can discover another interpretation of the garden as a place that embraces a diversity excluded by all other spaces, imperfect fragments of landscape where the natural landscape unexpectedly recreates itself spontaneously.

It is not the gardener who creates the garden, but the garden that creates the gardener! Only by rediscovering a deep connection and collaboration with nature can we create places capable of emerging from the aridity of copy-paste landscapes.

P234, 235  –  Claudia Fuggetti  –  Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis represents the historical period we are living in, a phase of transition and change that concerns not only us but also, above all, nature. Quoting the ecological philosopher David Abram:”I think it is useful to approach the issue of the ecological crisis as a crisis of perception, a crisis in the way we experience, with our bodies, sounds, smells, the world around us. It seems that we no longer perceive forests, mountains, rivers as living as we do.

“The project invites viewers to reconsider nature as a living entity. Chromatic interventions in the photographs symbolize the presence of life that persists even in adverse environmental conditions. However, artificial colors simultaneously highlight the consumption of natural resources: reality is perceived as manifold and changeable, fragmented and limited. Human presence is suspended, contemplative, and meditative, in an attempt to establish a new connection with the natural elements.The symbolism of colors expresses the regenerative and pulsating potential at the heart of the Earth, constructing new imagery. Amid the challenges of the Anthropocene, nature demonstrates an innate capacity for evolution and metamorphosis.

P236, 241  –  Marcel Top  –  Reversed Surveillance

In January 2023, the French government passed a bill allowing the use of algorithmic video surveillance (AVS) as a legal crowd controlling measure for any gathering of more than 300 people. This technology is put in place to automate the process of detecting crime, as it is able to capture features that are missable to the human eye. Artificial intelligence decides who is a suspect and who isn’t.

Emotion recognition is similar to facial recognition, but instead of focusing on identity recognition, its aim is to decode the person’s inner emotional state. In this case, the artificial intelligence is trained to detect, analyse and decode human behavioural patterns associated with emotions.

Starting from a 3 hour long livestream of a recent French protest, the artist uses the software ‘Video Content Analysis’ to analyse the crowd and discern over 30 000 people’s faces. With the use of an AI trained to recognise 7 facial expression associated with determined emotions the artist categorises the protestors based on the emotional state they were assigned by the artificial intelligence. This process allows him to visualise how the AI interprets a protest.

There is currently no record of emotion recognition being used in decisions affecting protestors. However, this technology has been widely used by companies to monitor their employees.

The continuously evolving nature of surveillance technologies, combined with the normalisation derived by the ease with which these technologies are introduced on a legislative level, poses a threat to the right of assembly, protest, and speech. This becomes extremely threatening when the technology is given the task to decode something of human nature, and used to make decision based on probability rather than events.

P242, 245  –  Dominique Bartels  –  Running with the Wolves

Almost 30 years after the publication of the book ‘Women Who Run With The Wolves’ (Clarissa Estés, 1992), I look for encounters with wolves to connect with intuition, listening, and my own landscape. It’s an introspection and re- search into the fact that I was ‘born a girl’ in this world: how has this influenced my way of being in, and showing or not showing, my body?

P246, 257  –  Charles Thiefaine  –  Z

A retired fisherman, a student at the Lycée de la Mer, a group of young people on their way to the beach: in the Z series, Charles Thiefaine went out to meet the inhabitants of the Ile de Thau to paint a portrait of this working-class district in the north of Sète and to question the viewer about the relationship between the individual and the sea. The island of Thau, a district built in the 1970s, has suffered a form of continuous isolation caused by its topography and the abandonment of the public authorities.

In this work, the photographer sets out to offer a singular document that demystifies the lives of the district’s inhabitants by tackling different themes such as family, friendship, studies, boredom and partying. The Z series redraws the contours of a sometimes stereotypical society by introducing imagination and creating new narratives.

P258, 259  –  Lolita Chaprak  –  1937

The past in Russia is often shrouded in silence and understatement. This is especially true for tragic events that cast doubt on the official version of history and raise questions about the nature of power.One such period is the era of Stalinist repressions. The rights of millions were violated as they were unjustly accused, sent to camps, and killed. During the Great Terror, the state brutally infringed on the personal boundaries of its citizens, pushing the limits of how far power could go in suppressing and controlling people. To this day, many aspects of that period remain classified. Open discussions about mass repressions lead to conflicts, resistance, and attempts to minimize the scale of these tragedies. Those who raise this topic face expulsion from universities and are sent to war, and the organization “Memorial,” which studied political repressions in the USSR, has been dissolved, with many of its members imprisoned. The families of the victims often still don’t know the truth about the fate of their loved ones, and the archives contain many gaps and hidden pages.

In my family, as in many families in Russia, there was silence about a repressed relative. I learned about the fate of my great-grandmother only at the age of 24. Since then, I have been working on a project based on archival photographs and documents. By studying the case files of my great-grandmother and others, I find connections with events happening in Russia today. The past and present intertwine, showing how power tends to repeat inhumane and cruel patterns. The boundaries of collective memory are blurred or erased, often with the help of state pressure, which is felt by every generation.

Through photography and archival documents, I aim to keep the memory of these bloody events alive in the public consciousness, reminding people of the victims of repression and highlighting the ongoing need for truth and justice. Studying the past helps me understand how the traumas passed down through generations continue to influence our actions and perspectives today.

These and other silenced pages of history reveal the tendency of those in power to distort facts, manipulate information, and control people, stripping them of their rights and even their lives. We need to learn to speak the truth and accept it to build a brighter future. After all, silence and the concealment of facts prevent us from understanding and correcting the mistakes of the past and moving forward.

P260, 263  –  Francisco Gonzalez Camacho  –  Reverting

Work part of a visual research through materiality on the commoditization of nature in the context of the tourist industryin Iceland. Developed in Reykjavík with the SIM artist-in-residence program.

Gentrification, waste and environmental degradation are some of the problems related to tourism, challenging theidealized image of the Icelandic landscape. During my stay, I photographed highly visited natural locations, which Ireinterpreted in combination with the creation of my own handmade recycled paper from waste.

This exploration mirrors the transformative process of manifesting something from the void —a form of alchemy ofwaste— with the delicate equilibrium of our environment, and the perpetual cycle it follows.

P266, 269  –  Rui Costa  –  Uma Azeitona Bordada em Azul

Vulnerable, this need for impermanence that was manifested, inexplicable, in a second of apnea close to the definitive, endless. The opportunity that arose and that I document, between uncertainties of an imagined truth and the familiar fragility that takes away my discernment.I tried to return to that place, emotionally, to try to understand you, irrationally, even knowing that in the skin you inhabit, there are more lines and fewer words, than those contained on this page.

And without questioning your choice, I try to understand what I don’t feel.This essay comes after my grandmother’s suicide attempt, in early 2022.An abrupt event, synonymous with rupture and restlessness. A limit that was reached, saturated and dense. A path that was drawn, starting again and learning from what we are.I then return to her safe place, to find her again available as always, to listen to her with the time I never had, to dedicate to her every day that does not repeat itself.

I sit down and listen to the stories she has to tell, some I know by heart from hearing them so often, others are as new as the pomegranates on the table, but all of them are old as the colour she is wearing.The days go by and the minutes are hers, I observe her presence in the garden that now grows, we walk in the late afternoon without fear that the sun will hide.

I learn with the resilience that every day surprises, motivates and makes me believe that all this makes sense. I grow with the presence that always supported me even before I met myself and I repay it with my being, in that slow living.

I now realize how the purpose in which we use photography can originate an extremely positive impact on someone’s life. That a photographic essay is an exchange of experiences, a manifestation of respect and trust, a need to understand and an attempt to see the world through another person’s eyes.

This is my representation of gratitude and if photography is memory perhaps time is the tribute.In the presence of the dimness, I contemplate the space that the land occupies.

P284, 287  –  Xiao Zhang  –  Parasitic on illusion

“Parasitic on illusion” is a poetic and enigmatic series that delves into the symbiotic relationship between human and non-human systems, and the unknown higher existence. I engage in a visual dialogue that traverses the boundaries of reality, inviting viewers to ponder the ephemeral nature of existence and the delicate interplay between light and shadow, nature and artifice.

These images juxtaposes organic forms with man-made elements, each photograph serves as a fragment of a larger narrative, a moment suspended in time that captures the transient beauty and haunting ambiguity of our world. The images evoke a sense of mystery and introspection, drawing on themes of transparency, reflection, and transformation. “Parasitic on illusion” challenges viewers to look beyond the surface and engage with the deeper, often unseen connections that bind us to our world.

P290, 291  –  Marco Castelli  –  A Micro Odyssey

Most of the photographs of microbes and bacteria have a scientific nature, adapted to detect and to emphasize the unique geometries that these are able to form. This time, however, the interest is not to show what is hardly visible to the naked eye, but to use the natural shapes of bacterial colonies to enlarge and project them into another dimension, reversing all logic and ratio between big and small, thus loading the planets, the universe and all the work of symbolic values. This gives them charm and mystery, makes them sublime images and ironic too (planets names directly refer to the sampled surfaces), which in their relationship with science recall the themes, the spirit and the philosophy of a lot of artistic production from the last century.

P304, 307  –  Yorgos Kapsalakis  –  Death will come bearing your eyes

In this work, I attempt to illuminate recurrent dreams that have resonated with me since childhood. Through a process of inquiry, I have come to recognise the profound influence of my immediate surroundings in shaping these dreams. Utilising the medium of photography, I endeavour to search into the origins of these dreams, particularly how they are intertwined with my family’s superstitions, thus engaging with the realm of the unconscious mind.

The title is taken from the Italian poet Cesare Pavese where he wrote in the last pages of his diary, recording his path to love and death towards a “hereditary archetype” that repeats itself over the centuries.

P308, 311  –  Josefine Rauch  –  Temple Road

In the outskirts of Frankfurt, in the midst of an industrial area, lies an enclave that undergoes a transformation every Sunday. While the district hosts a bustling workforce during the week, a different energy unfolds on weekends. Within the confines of industrial warehouses, diverse faith communities find spiritual solace in an unlikely setting. Behind closed doors, and largely unnoticed by the rest of the city, the plain halls of Temple Road come to life for prayers, weddings, birthdays and other community activities. Side by side and concurrently, various independent churches and cultural associations coexist between repair shops, office buildings and one of Germany’s biggest meat producing factories.

Mainly due to the affordable rents and because of the quiet, congregates come together conjuring temples through their presence. While the institutionalized churches are ever-present in Germany’s urban landscape, these small communities remain hidden and among themselves creating a strong contrast between acts of worship and these rather austere surroundings.

P312, 315  –  Daria Nazarova  –  Natura

“I could still feel that optimism vibrating through the decades: that our bodies are full of power, and furthermore that their power is not despite but because of their manifest vulnerabilities.”
Olivia Laing, Everybody

It’s been a year and a half since I started working as a model in the sculpture workshop of the Tbilisi Academy of Arts. The frozen body is like a metaphor for my life, frozen the moment Russia invaded Ukraine and my husband and I moved to Georgia.

In Georgian, Russian, and several other languages, the word ’Natura’ refers to a model posing for painters and sculptors. In Latin, the same word means nature. Students look at me, study, sculpt, perceive my body as an object for learning. I document the process and results of our work. By being completely naked, I show my openness. This desperate step was taken with the hope of getting closer to others and overcoming the feeling of alienation in exile.

My body is my only home. I will hide in it, as if in a shell, among the trees, mountains and caves, among the ancient places of a foreign country. Nature is what is inside me and what surrounds me, it brings peace and consolation. I am a nature frozen in time, a model for creating a sculpture, I am a sculpture myself. I feel connected to all living creatures, but at the same time I feel alone. I’m trying to integrate into the new world without losing myself, my identity and roots. But who am I? I have character, I must be strong, I must rise up and start moving forward. But for now I look more like a person standing on the station platform while the train rushes past at great speed.

P318, 321  –  Chochana Rosso  –  The Sun Burns

The Sun gives birth and devours its children.

As a mystical entity, it is the creator of the universe, the center of the world and the heart of humans. Through the solar cycle, birth, burning and beginning again, this entity unfolds in a temporality. A trinity of lights endowed with a spiritual coherence and symbolism that Chochana uses as architecture to build this work on love. The photographic object is reflected in the Sun, and she tells the story of an unstable relationship that feeds the fantasy of an almost mystical desire. She makes us discover her sun, related to an intimacy and a secret love, like a house constantly broken and rebuilt with deformities.

She tries to capture this entity in her obsessive photographic practice, and she struggles to maintain a distant connection that burns her when she seizes it.

This visual diary is turned towards an external photographic subject but refers to the artist and her unspeakable feelings. Through her images, she tells a story and testifies to her love and fascination for the photographed object. Her meeting with Alexander, in 2019, provokes a photographic “love at first sight” in the artist. Met during a photography workshop in Venice, he represents the myth of the young artist, an inaccessible Adonis, and a source of enriching intellectual exchanges. He will become an inspiration and her only male presence in the long term. The series tells of this fascination for Alexander, the fits in this intense relationship, which intensifies and solidifies over time.The phases of the sun structure the story: dawn speaks of the meeting and the birth of desire, the zenith represents blindness and burning, then dusk announces the contentment of feelings. This trinity gives a spiritual and symbolic coherence to an architecture made of light.

P322, 323  –  Fabienne Watzke  –  Lately I’ve been dreaming in pink and blue

Where do you hide when you feel vulnerable? Where do you flee to when you don’t want your softness to be seen? What is your armor, your shield, your sword?

At times one can feel lost in a society that thinks only in norms and categories, that thinks in terms of hard and soft, weak and strong, pink and blue. We retreat into armors that we have built for ourselves, that others build for us, that we construct together, every day anew. But in the steel gleam of armor, there is no right or wrong, no categories, when we battle, they dissolve. There is no more good and evil. We hide our tears behind the visor, only blood sticks to our armor. We burn when we want to lead an army, to start a revolution and yet have breasts. Only we don’t burn in pink or blue, we all burn the same.

“Lately I’ve been dreaming in pink and blue” is a photographic work by Fabienne Watzke. The work explores gender roles and the knights, dragons, and damsels of our time through an intermedial approach. In Watzke’s photographic work, the knight and his armor symbolize our rigid role models, the tight corset called patriarchy, and how far back the history of our ingrained categories, accepted norms, structures, and power dynamics dates. The project consist of photos addressing personal experiences being a woman today as well as historical facts. Have there been female knights? Heroines? Women who didn’t have to pay for their deeds at the stake? What happens when you slip into the armor yourself — do you feel powerful? Powerful women are still not well-received today; women are objectified, from afar, up close, behind rolled-down car windows, fast horses, in large groups, gawking, in the castles of our world — the shields of our time, and we, the damsel in mistress.

Watzkes aim was to engage with this rigid, cold, and unyielding material, to appropriate it, reshape it, and create something new in the process. It is an attempt to dissolve an oppressive rigidity, to drag clichés into the absurd through gestures, poses, and settings, and to make viewers and readers question: What does masculinity even mean? What about femininity? And what happens when these seemingly closed categories merge, when protection becomes a cage, and power turns into oppression? Personal experiences, the engagement with gender stereotypes, and historical context are intertwined to provoke reflection on the armors we impose on ourselves daily. One quickly realizes: This is no fairy tale, and the rescue is up to us alone.

P324, 329  –  Daniel Casares-Roman  –  Silver Paper

“Silver Paper” is a long-term photographic work about heroin use. Made on analog support, the name is a play on words referring to the paper they use to administer the drug by inhalation and the paper that I, as a photographer, use to obtain the images in the traditional darkroom photography laboratory.

SILVER PAPER CAPTIONS:

01: Alvaro looks for a place to administer the drug in an abandoned building on the outskirts of Jerez

02: Alvaro returns to the Poligono San Benito after nightfall.

03: Diogenes syndrome and a desperate need to supplement his income sends him out onto the streets everyday in search of scraps he can sell: copper, plastic, cardboard – whatever he can find. He sells to neighbours or others in an attempt to scrape together another 7 or 8 euros.

03: The police arrest Montero, a common criminal who has been wanted for some time in the city, while other police officers search for his accomplice who has managed to escape.

P330, 333  –  Edie Nightingall  –  Chrysalis

I have always had an innate sense of longing and belonging to the one place I have lived my whole life. Never having felt quite ready to “fly the nest” and rooted in the house which holds my childhood memories, ‘Chrysalis’ explores the fragility of growing up and the inevitability of the passing of time. The project is a personal need to document my final moments of childlike naivety, as well as a delicate metamorphosis into maturity. Using photography, I explore my relationship to this house and my family with both my adult perspective, as well as an inner child that remains attached to these people and places. Although an introspective body of work, ‘Chrysalis’ is a universal ode to home relating to a transitional period of adolescence to adulthood we all must go through.

P334, 335  –  François Boutaud  –  (11946)BAYLES

This work speaks to us about the boundaries between the agricultural world and the holistic world, the boundaries between dream and reality, about what connects us, about the Earth and the Moon.

(11946) Bayle (orbit characterized by a semi-major axis of 3.14 AU, an eccentricity of 0.145, and an inclination of 0.519° relative to the ecliptic)

Here, a strangeness persists. Something about the moon.

A piece of Earth torn away is like a possibility, another version. Perhaps its magnetism isn’t quite the same here, perhaps it’s just a little closer, just a little fuller. And its brightness, the unchanging reflection of the sun, floods us…Something develops, slowly or suddenly, in the night. A night that could be ours, or that of another planet, with its own laws of attraction.

It would be something that could only be captured by the light of the moon, and its persistence in broad daylight.

P336, 337  –  George Nebieridze  –  A Nervous Boy In Several Ways

“A Nervous Boy in Several Ways” (2008-2013) is an autobiographical work consisting of over 200 photographs focusing on Georgian youth during the transformative period from the post-Soviet era to a new democracy with all of its challenges and benefits. The generation that shaped not only their daily lives but also the societal structure as whole. Nebieridze’s project is a reflection of this new time, showcasing the efforts of the generation in constructing the country’s political landscape, a movement that began long before its visible impact today.

P340, 341  –  Claudia Sicuranza  –  Future Primitive

For much of human history, we have lived within nature, in communities, in balance with one another and with the surrounding environment. Without walls, without borders, without private property.The project proposes to imagine and experiment with an old/new way of living, starting from an analysis and reinterpretation of the society we live in, a future primitive: a term coined by J. Zerzan suggesting the reconquest of a primordial freedom inspired by a prehistoric way of life. Are we truly capable of returning to living in simplicity? By inviting seven performers to live for three days in a wood, captured by camera traps hidden among the trees, the work draws attention to our anthropocentric lifestyle and the disconnection from our natural integrity.

P342, 345  –  Dmitrii Vasilev  –  Hiding in the light

The most of my life I have lived side by side with one of the most famous prisons in Russia. The prison space has begun behind the wall of my kitchen. Every day I walked along a red brick wall with barbed wire, but what was behind the wall was always hidden from my eyes. Prison cells, surveillance cameras, and people in uniform have surrounded me since childhood. In society around me, government controls almost all spheres of life through control and restrictions. And the police and security agencies play the lead role in politics and public life. I feel like that red brick wall was just an object in a space, which doesn’t confine the disciplinary power. In my project, I explore the topic of government control inherent in modern society. At the end of the 18th century, the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham proposed a project for an ideal prison — the Panopticon, which later became a metaphor for a disciplinary society construction. In the design of the Panopticon, power works through the asymmetry of knowledge, where light and the warden gaze play the key role. The light imprisons better than the darkness that hides the prisoner. Working with a medium of photography that is also closely linked to light, I explore the possibilities of escaping ever-present control and my perception of power through photography, turning to my experience of growing up close to the prison and combining this with the reality around me. In this project, I use photography, archive photos, visual cryptography, and found images.

P346, 349  –  Chiara Benzi  –  Like a Knife in the Sun, Endure

“Like a Knife in the Sun” is a radical experimentation that focuses on the point of contact between Eros and Thanatos, the convergence between love and death, the impossible desire of continuity and its inevitable disintegration, bringing out the dominant charm of eroticism. Through physical and digital manipulation of her own photographs and archival images, Benzi explores that liminal zone between a burial, deadly and loss idea and an idea of eroticism and sexuality, that common denominator between the celebration of life and its transitory and ephemeral condition. Creating a visual itinerary of the path to the pinnacle of pleasure that we, as human beings, can experience only with the grief of its loss, and consequently has to be shredded as this encounter is already dead.

Endure “How much can a body endure?” Benzi asks herself.
She explores our longings and fears projected onto nature and what our bodies can endure [under physical and emotional duress], starting with the physical body and then lifting off into a more oneiric space.
The project transcends our dysfunctional coexistence with nature, embracing a fantasy in which a woman becomes a dream, an animal, a plant… A woman returns to soil, returns to frailer form.
Using photography, video and sound, her work aims to involve the viewer in a dreamlike voyage through the most hungry, lustful, disgusting, vulnerable part of herself speaking. At the same time, she seeks a link between personal and collective, between introspection and connection, creating the ambiguity ratio, the double entendre, and the double meaning.
It’s an open reflection that draws from imagination as a favored tool of discovery and contamination in relationships between humans and the rest of the living beings.