PORTFOLIO REVIEWS

 
 
 

PORTFOLIO REVIEWS 2024

Date and Time: Saturday 31 August 2024/ 13:30 to 14:30 at Osteria Vittoria in Lavertezzo

To participate, artists have to register to the organised journey of Saturday 31.08. Registration here.

Once the registration is done you will get acces to an online form, to choose your portfolio reviewers.

Free reviews for:
- Verzasca Foto Awards participants
- Exhibiting artists

Bring your laptop or printed copies.

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Experts applications

If you’re interested to discover new projects and be part of the official reviewers list,
please contact us at info(at)verzascafoto.ch and we will provide you with pleasure more informations.
The festival will organize for you board and lodging in the Verzasca Valley

 

Portfolio Reviewers 2024

Danaé Panchaud

 
 

Danaé Panchaud is a Swiss exhibition curator, museologist and lecturer specialising in photography, and the director of the Centre de la photographie Genève. She served from 2018 to 2021 as director and curator of the Photoforum Pasquart in Biel, Switzerland. She trained in photography at the Vevey School of Photography before completing a bachelor’s degree in visual arts with a specialisation in curatorial practices at HEAD – Geneva University of Art and Design. She later studied museology at Birkbeck, University of London, earning a master’s degree in 2017. She has held positions in several Swiss institutions in the fields of contemporary art, design and science, including the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, where she was a research associate from 2007 to 2012, the Gallery SAKS in Geneva in 2012-2013, and the mudac in Lausanne, where she was in charge of the public relations from 2012 to 2017.

As a free-lance curator, she has curated exhibitions for several Swiss museums, independent spaces and galleries, and written critical texts for monographs of contemporary artists, exhibition catalogues, and thematic publications such as Flora Photographica, co-authored with William Ewing and published by Thames & Hudson in 2022. She was a lecturer at the Vevey School of Photography from 2014 to 2018.

>Languages : French, English

Margherita Guerra

 

Photography curator and digital marketing expert, working in Switzerland and Italy. With a Bachelor in Theology, a Master Degree in Photography, and a Master in Digital Marketing, she worked for 10 years at the historical photographic Alinari Archive in Florence. She then founded Yourpictureditor, a company specializing in photography research and copyright management for publishers. 7 years ago she founded the Fotofestival Lenzburg, in Switzerland, which she direct. 

>Languages : Italian, English, German

Kateryna Radchenko

 

Since 2015 – founder and director of the international festival Odesa Photo Days.
2023 – World Press Photo Contest jury member (Chair of Europe region)
Curated exhibitions in Ukraine, South Korea, Sweden, Georgia, France, Canada, Latvia, Poland, The Netherlands, Germany and UK.

As an author, she has published articles in several international magazines and online platforms, such as Fotograf, Magenta, EIKON, British Journal of Photography, FOAM Magazines, Over. In collaboration with the Finnish Museum of Photography wrote the book Images Tells Stories. In 2022 together with Christopher Nunn and Donald Weber published two volumes of The Information Front.
She has participated as a Portfolio Reviewer in many different photo festivals such as: Riga Photo Month, Lodz Photo Festival, Suwon Photo Festival, Photo Wien, Landskrona Photo Festival, Kranj Photo Festival.

>Languages : English,

Giuseppe Oliviero

 

Giuseppe Oliverio (Bologna, 1985) is the Founder and Artistic Director of PhMuseum and PhMuseum Days International Photography Festival. Since 2012, he has led the organization to develop their renewed Grants and Education Programs. He has further conducted workshops in Argentina, Brazil, Italy, and in the Middle East. He has been a juror of awards such as Lucie Photo Book Prize, Magenta Foundation's Flash Forward, Blow Up Press Book Award, LensCulture Critics' Choice, United Photo Industry The Fence, and Cortona Happiness OnTheMove. He has worked as a portfolio reviewer for Futures Photography, Unseen, Photo Vogue Festival, Fotografia Europea, and Visa Pour L'Image. He has written for TIME magazine and L'Uomo Vogue.

>Languages : Italian, English

Anna Kostantinova

 

Anna Konstantinova is a curator based in Zurich. Her professional interests include photography and post-photography, process-based and participatory art and digital curating. She is a part of the Swiss photographic collective pool, the curatorial team of the contemporary photography collection of the investment company Vontobel and the contemporary art gallery Lullin + Ferrari. She holds an MA in Media Studies from the Russian State University of the Humanities and MAS in Curating from Zurich University of the Arts.

>Languages: German, English, Russian

Julie Bonzon

 

Born in Switzerland, Julie Bonzon, Ph.D. is an art historian, photography curator, and writer. Following a Masters in History of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London (2015), she completed an AHRC-funded Ph.D. in the History of Art at University College London (2020), specialising in South African photography. A book based on her research, titled The Market Photo Workshop in South Africa and the 'Born Free' Generation: Remaking Histories was published by Routledge Photography in 2023. Bonzon has led curatorial and education projects at Magnum Photos, The Photographer’s Gallery, The Ian Parry Scholarship, The Olympic Foundation for Culture and Heritage, and The Sharjah Architecture Triennial.
She worked at the London gallery Messums as Director of Photography, setting up a new photography department representing international artists, and has since 2019 collaborated with private collectors alongside her curatorial activities.
In 2020, she founded The Photographic Collective, an online platform featuring lens-based artists living and working in Africa.

>Languages : English, German, French

 

FURTHER REVIEWERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED SOON


Portfolio reviewers 2023

Matjaz Krivic

 

Matjaz Krivic is a documentary photographer capturing long-term stories of people and places. For 25 years he has covered the face of the earth in his intense, personal and aesthetically moving style, portraying poor parts of the world characterised by traditions, social unrest and religious devotion. In recent years he has been focusing on conservation and environmental issues and acting as an advocate for a greener future through his work.

His work and multimedia projects were exhibited in galleries, museums, open-air exhibitions in Slovenia and across the world, at international photo festivals like La Gacilly Photo, Les Rencontres d’Arles and Visa pour l’image, and were widely published around the world by numerous national and international media outlets including National Geographic, BBC, Wired, Boston Globe, Geo, Guardian, Stern, Spiegel, Le Figaro, Le Monde, Newsweek, GQ, Internationale, D-La Repubblica, Wall Street Journal, Forbes and many others. Krivic has won several prestigious awards, including World Press Photo, Picture of the Year International, and Lens Culture.

He has been judging several international photo competitions, occasionally giving out photography workshops around the world and has co-created a first Bolivian photo festival FotoFestival Manzana1 where he is a creative director.

Catalina Martin-Chico

 

Franco-Spanish, Catalina began her career at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York.

Yemen was her reporting territory from 2007 to 2017. Her immersion at the Yemeni revolution earned her the ICRC's Visa d'or humanitaire in 2011.

After years in the Muslim world, from Morocco to Iran, Yemen and Egypt, Catalina turned to Latin America.

Winner of the Canon Woman Photojournalist Award in 2017, about her project on FARC ex-combatants in Colombia. Her images were exhibited as part of Visa pour l'Image Festival and around the world.

This work won the "Contemporary issues" prize at Worldpress 2019, and one of the photos was nominated for "Photo of the Year". The project was a finalist for the 2020 Oskar Barnack, Global Peace Award and Alexia Foundation.

In 2021, Catalina won the POY LATAM award with her work on the Sarayaku indigenous people in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

In 2022, she won a grant from the Centre National d'Arts Plastiques for a project on youth in Chile, as well as the "Grande commande photographique" from the French Ministry of Culture and the BNF for her work on outdoor schools.

The photojournalist has been a regular contributor to French and international press.

>Languages: French, English, Spanish

Stefano Stoll

 

Foto: Anoush Abrar

Stefano Stoll (born in 1974 in Zürich, Switzerland) is Founder, Director and Chief Curator of Images Vevey, in Switzerland. This dynamic brand has 4 main activities: a biennial, an award, a permanent exhibition space and a publishing house.

Since 2008, Stefano Stoll has made monumental outdoor installations the speciality of the visual arts biennial. Every second year, Images Vevey proposes site-specific outdoor and indoor photographic installations in Vevey’s streets and parks, on the facades of its building, in its museums and galleries, and even in Lake Geneva. He has collaborated with artists such as Cindy Sherman, Dayanita Singh, Christian Marclay, Hans-Peter Feldman, Paul Fusco, René Burri, Lee Friedlander, Ryoji Ikeda, Alex Prager, JR, Erwin Wurm, Lebohang Kganye, Daido Moryiama, Christian Boltanski, Martin Parr, Bettina Rheims, Alec Soth, Thomas Struth, Bertien van Manen, Carmen Winant and Gillian Wearing among others.

Besides managing the Grand Prix Images Vevey, one of Europe’s longest standing grants for photographic creation, he created and curates a permanent off-space dedicated to contemporary photography (L’Appartement – Espace Images Vevey). He is currently developing Images Vevey’s own publishing house, committed to assist innovative editorial projects, in particular with the creation of the Images Vevey Book Award. Several Editions Images Vevey books have been shortlisted for the prestigious Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation Awards, one of which won the “Best PhotoBook of the Year 2020” Award.

In 2021, he co-curated Images Gibellina in Sicily, an Italian version of the Swiss biennial. He is regularly invited on international juries and chaired, for example, the Paul Huf Award (Amsterdam). He is a member of AICA and writes on cultural policy, visual arts and photography. In 2019, he published The Book of Images (Koenig Books London), a dictionary of visual experiences featuring the 299 artists from 39 countries who took part in Images Vevey projects between 2008 and 2018.

>Languages: Italian, French, English

Marco de Mutiis

 

Marco De Mutiis is Digital Curator at Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland where he leads the museum research on digital and networked images. He leads and co-curates different projects and platforms expanding the role and the space of the museum. These include the collaborative live stream programme Screen Walks (developed and co-curated with Jon Uriarte, curator of digital programmes at The Photographers’ Gallery in London), as well as Fotomuseum’s current experimental platform [permanent beta] The Lure of the Image.

He is a researcher and doctoral candidate at the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image at South Bank University where he focuses on the relationship between computer games and photography. He co-curated with Matteo Bittanti the group exhibition How to Win at Photography – Image-making as Play, exploring the photographic act through the act of play and the notion of games.

He has written, edited and contributed to several publications, including the recent book Screen Images – In-Game Photography, Screenshot, Screencast (co-edited with Winfried Gerling and Sebastian Möring). He lectures and teaches regularly in different institutions and schools, including Master Photography at ECAL and Camera Arts at Lucerne University of Applied Arts and Design.

>Languages : Italian, German, English

Francesco Giusti

 

Born in 1969 Francesco Giusti lives in Milan, Italy.

Documentary photographer oriented toward the investigation of contemporary, social and identity related issues. He has explored different approaches and practices in photography: from photojournalistic essays to portrait stories, from long term documentary based projects to experimental researches. He has worked primarily in Africa, in Europe and the Mediterranean, in the Caribbean region and in Latin America. He has been awarded with prizes from different organisations such as the World Press Photo in 2010, Voies Off Arles/Prix de la Critique 2016, and others. His works have been exhibited in galleries, public institutions and international events such as Rencontres d’Arles 1999, Visa Perpignan 2000, Festival di Fotografia di Roma 2006, Fotografica Bogotà 2010, Houston Fotofest 2011, 4th Fotofestival Germany 2011, FIFV Valparaiso Chile 2013, Photovisa Festival Russia 2014 & 2018, Getxo Photo 2015, Voies Off Arles 2016, Indian Photo Festival 2017, and others.

He has run workshops in Italy, Egypt, Kenia, Germany, France, Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Bolivia. He is professor of photography at NABA (Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti), Milan, Italy.

He collaborates with Prospekt Photographers.

>Languages : Italian, English

Rudolf Steiner

 

Rudolf Steiner is a self-taught photographer with a multidisciplinary approach. Since 1998, he has been collaborating with Barbara Meyer Cesta under the "Haus am Gern" label, while continuing his personal work as a photographer and video artist. He has had numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Kunsthalle Bern and the Foto-Forum St. Gallen. His work has been shown at Rencontres d'Arles, Photographers Gallery London, Kunsthalle and Kunstmuseum Bern and at apexart, New York. 

>Languages : German, English

Nadine Wietlisbach

 

Nadine Wietlisbach devises exhibitions, publications and other discursive formats in the fields of contemporary photography and art. She is Director of Fotomuseum Winterthur since J2018. From 2015 till 2017 she was the Director of Photoforum Pasquart Biel/Bienne, following her post as a curator at the Nidwaldner Museum in Stans.

She founded the independent art space sic! Raum für Kunst in Lucerne in 2007. Curatorial fellowship at MoCP in Chicago (2017), work for the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia in South Africa and Mozambique (2007/2008). Winner of the Swiss Art Award 2015.

>Languages : German, English

Sébastien Peter

 

Sébastien Peter (1984) is an art historian, curator, and cultural promoter. He graduated in Art History from the University of Lausanne and Fribourg and obtained a MAS in Art Market Studies from the University of Zurich. From 2016 to 2021, he has held the position of Deputy Delegate for Culture of the city of Biel/Bienne. Additionally, he has worked as an expert in visual arts for Pro Helvetia. 

In 2013, Sébastien co-founded the art space Sonnenstube in Lugano, where he served as co-director, organizing numerous exhibitions and concerts until 2017. He has also curated exhibitions and music programs in independent art spaces throughout Switzerland and has collaborated with auction houses, galleries, and specialized magazines. In 2021, he created the biennial La Regionale, an art exhibition in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, and in 2023 he was one of the promoters of Straordinaria - Tour Vagabonde.

Starting from May 2023, Sébastien Peter holds the position of Director of Cultural Services of the City of Locarno and the city museums.

>Languages : Italian, English, French

Danaé Panchaud

 

Danaé Panchaud is a Swiss exhibition curator, museologist and lecturer specialising in photography, and the director of the Centre de la photographie Genève. She served from 2018 to 2021 as director and curator of the Photoforum Pasquart in Biel, Switzerland. She trained in photography at the Vevey School of Photography before completing a bachelor’s degree in visual arts with a specialisation in curatorial practices at HEAD – Geneva University of Art and Design. She later studied museology at Birkbeck, University of London, earning a master’s degree in 2017. She has held positions in several Swiss institutions in the fields of contemporary art, design and science, including the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, where she was a research associate from 2007 to 2012, the Gallery SAKS in Geneva in 2012-2013, and the mudac in Lausanne, where she was in charge of the public relations from 2012 to 2017.

As a free-lance curator, she has curated exhibitions for several Swiss museums, independent spaces and galleries, and written critical texts for monographs of contemporary artists, exhibition catalogues, and thematic publications such as Flora Photographica, co-authored with William Ewing and published by Thames & Hudson in 2022. She was a lecturer at the Vevey School of Photography from 2014 to 2018.

>Languages : French, English

Urs Stahel

 

Urs Stahel is a freelance writer, curator, lecturer and consultant. Curator of MAST – Manifattura di Arti, Sperimentazione e Tecnologia – in Bologna, consultant of the MAST collection of industrial photography, Advisor to Foto Colectania, Barcelona, and to the Collection of Art Vontobel, Zürich.
He is the co-founder of Fotomuseum Winterthur and was its director and curator from 1993 to 2013. He lives and works in Zurich.

He is curator of many exhibitions and author/editor of numerous books, for example by Paul Graham, Rineke Dijkstra, Joachim Brohm, Luigi Ghirri, Zoe Leonard, Roni Horn, Anders Petersen, Shirana Shahbazi, Astrid Klein, Ai Weiwei, Stefan Burger, Amar Kanwar, David Goldblatt, Hans Danuser, Claudio Moser, Boris Mikhailov, Sharon Ya'ari, Lewis Baltz, Thomas Ruff, Dayanita Singh, Jitka Hanzlova, Valérie Jouve, E.O. Hoppé, W. Eugene Smith, Thomas Struth, Richard Mosse or on topics such as "Hybrid", "Uncanny" "Trade", Im Rausch der Dinge", "Darkside I + II", "7P - 7 Places, 7 Precarious Fields", "The Power of Images", "Pendulum - Moving Things, Moving People", "Face Control" and "Uniform", about the role of working clothes in industry and society.

>Languages: German, French, Italian and English

Peter Pfrunder

 

Peter Pfrunder, born in Singapore, studied literature and popular culture at the Universities of Zurich, Berlin, and Montpellier (France). He worked as a journalist before he was appointed director of the Fotostiftung Schweiz / Swiss Foundation for Photography, Winterthur, in 1998. Under his direction, the Foundation has become the leading national heritage institution for photography in Switzerland, commissioned to take care of more than 100 archives of outstanding photographers.

Peter Pfrunder has published a wide range of books and essays on historical and contemporary photography. He curated over 40 exhibitions in the premises of the Foundation in Winterthur, but also in international museums in Europe, China and India as well as in photography festivals, such as the Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles. Peter Pfrunder lives and works in Zug and Winterthur, Switzerland.

>Language : German, French, English

Vera Bianda

 

Vera Bianda (1987) is a graphic designer and partner at Theredbox communication design studio. Her work ranges from editorial design for books and catalogs to the planning and execution of installations; from corporate design to signage projects; from websites to interactive installations.

Thanks to her projects, she collaborates with artists and photographers on an international level.

As a member of the board of directors of the Biennale dell’immagine di Chiasso, she coordinates and promotes the festival and related events.

> Language : Italian, English

Lars Willumeit

 

Lars Willumeit is a curator, author, and art educator based in Switzerland. Since 2018 he has been curator at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne. With degrees in Social Anthropology (London School of Economics and Political Science) and Curatorial Studies (Zürcher Hochschule der Künste), his interests are in photography, documentarisms, regimes of representation, and visual cultures.

Recent curatorial projects include: Yann Mingard – Everything is up in the air, thus our vertigo, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne (2019); Salvatore Vitale –How to Secure a Country, Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur (2019); CO-OP, Unseen, Amsterdam (2017 + 2018). Recent written contributions include: Why not...gather together?!— Imagineering the (Un-)becomings of Photography as Arenas and Communities of Collective Meaning-Making and Collaborative Agency, in book Why Exhibit?, A.K. Rastenberger/I. Sikking eds. (FW-books, 2018); Wonderful to Watch — Some Notes on Ruin Lust and Creative Destruction in/of Photographic Realism, Andrea Botto, KABOOM (Editions Pierre Bessard, 2017). Willumeit is also editor of The (Un)becomings of Photography—On Reaggregating and Reassembling the Photographic and its Institutions (Foundation for Visual Arts, 2016).

www.larswillumeit.com

>Languages: German, French and English

Alessia Locatelli

 

Alessia Locatelli is the artistic director of the Enrico Cattaneo’s archive and of Women Photography Biennial in Mantua (Italy). She managed some of the past editions of the SiFest (Savignano) and the Canon Award, specializing in photography and becoming Independent Curator in the organization of exhibitions with both public and private entities, in Italy and abroad; while in parallel the activity of curating and consulting continues for artists and photographers. She’s the signature of some art & photo magazines and critic of the Photography Dossier within the “CAM, catalog of modern art” published by the Editorial Giorgio Mondadori - Cairo Group.

She organizes and teaches in professional courses to become Photo-curator in photography schools and independent realities throughout Italy. She’s in the organizational team of Photolux Festival in Lucca, 2019 edition. She’s in charge of helping and assisting authors in the selection of Fine Art papers and for materials useful for conservation and sale to collectors.

>Languages: Italian and English

Sidi Vanetti

 

Sidi Vanetti is part of a duo with Andreas Gysin: they work together on design and research projects without a particular purpose since 2000. They combine disciplines from the filed of visual communication, architecture and technology. Recent work explores images and patterns using the geometries of multipurpose displays, urban signage and found or forgotten objects.

What characterises their projects is that the intention is to not modify the layout (or visual organisation) of the chosen objects – they work with what the existing has to offer. Within these constraints they search for infinite visual permutation. Using only the given alphabet, Gysin-Vanetti build images, animations and generate patterns. Sidi Vanetti is born in 1975. He lives and works as a designer in Ticino, Switzerland. He believes in education and gives workshop in schools.

>Languages: French, English, Italian

Ann Griffin

 

Ann Griffin works as a graphic designer specialized in editorial design. Based in Zürich, she collaborates with publishers, photographers and artists on different book projects, with a particular interest in photography books. She has also led numerous workshops in different art schools, and has been teaching at eikon, Fribourg for several years.

Since 2017 she is a committee member of near. (Swiss association for contemporary photography).

www.anngriffin.ch
www.near.li

>Languages: Italian, French, German and English

 

Portfolio reviewers 2022

Urs Stahel

 

Foto: Jeff Wall, Bologna 2019

Urs Stahel is a freelance writer, curator, lecturer and consultant. Curator of MAST – Manifattura di Arti, Sperimentazione e Tecnologia – in Bologna, consultant of the MAST collection of industrial photography, Advisor to Foto Colectania, Barcelona, and to the Collection of Art Vontobel, Zürich.
He is the co-founder of Fotomuseum Winterthur and was its director and curator from 1993 to 2013. He lives and works in Zurich.

He is curator of many exhibitions and author/editor of numerous books, for example by Paul Graham, Rineke Dijkstra, Joachim Brohm, Luigi Ghirri, Zoe Leonard, Roni Horn, Anders Petersen, Shirana Shahbazi, Astrid Klein, Ai Weiwei, Stefan Burger, Amar Kanwar, David Goldblatt, Hans Danuser, Claudio Moser, Boris Mikhailov, Sharon Ya'ari, Lewis Baltz, Thomas Ruff, Dayanita Singh, Jitka Hanzlova, Valérie Jouve, E.O. Hoppé, W. Eugene Smith, Thomas Struth, Richard Mosse or on topics such as "Hybrid", "Uncanny" "Trade", Im Rausch der Dinge", "Darkside I + II", "7P - 7 Places, 7 Precarious Fields", "The Power of Images", "Pendulum - Moving Things, Moving People", "Face Control" and "Uniform", about the role of working clothes in industry and society.

>Languages: German, French, Italian and English

Vanya Pieters

 

Freelance picture editor, DIE ZEIT

Vanya Pieters works as a freelance picture editor with clients as DIE ZEIT and WELT AM SONNTAG. Also, she was a member of Fototreff Berlin, a bi-monthly talk show on photography.

Before moving to Berlin, she worked in Amsterdam for several arts and journalistic platforms as World Press Photo, Unseen Photo Fair and Narrative Journalism Foundation.  

>Languages: German and English

Daniela e Guido Giudici

 

Daniela and Guido Giudici have been presenting the work by Swiss, Italian and international photographers in their exhibition space “Cons Arc” in Chiasso, Italian Switzerland, since 1990 (after a first experience with the FotografiaOltre gallery in Chiasso from 1981-1985). At the gallery they organize lectures, book launches, conferences and workshop as well as exhibitions and they put together a very consistent library dedicated to photography, open to students and visitors. CONSARC/GALLERIA with both public and private spaces promote numerous events dedicated to photography, such as the Autunno Fotografico (1996-2000) and Biennale dell’Immagine, founded in 2004. They were committee members till Bi11 – 2019.


www.galleriaconsarc.ch

>Languages: Italian, French and English

Elisa Rusca

 

Art historian specialising in photography and the contemporary period, Elisa Rusca is chief curator at the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum in Geneva.
Ph.D candidate in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, since 2014 she has organised exhibitions in Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Poland and Brazil, and has given lectures in Europe, Brazil, South Korea and Taiwan.
She was co-director of DISKURS Berlin (2015-17), and founder of the Daydreamers Project (www.daydreamers.biz). A contributor for Kunstbulletin, she collaborated on the publication of the New Dictionary of Photography (Thames&Hudson, 2015) under the direction of Nathalie Herschdorfer, and published with Textuel, Goethe Institut Verlag and Mimesis.

elisarusca.com

>Languages: Italian, French, German and English

Myriam Grigalashvili

 

Myriam Grigalashvili is an independent photography curator and cultural manager from Tbilisi, Georgia.
Throughout the years she has worked at multiple art and cultural institutions, such as art gallery Window Project, Contemporary Art Space – MAUDI and Tbilisi State Silk Museum.
She was a manager and curator of Kolga Tbilisi Photo Festival, co-organizer of Odessa//Batumi Photo Days festival and project coordinator of Tbilisi Photo Festival.

Besides this Myriam Grigalashvili implements independent educational projects - workshops, photography courses and exhibitions.

Alongside her mother, Natela Grigalashvili, Myriam is a co-founder of cultural-educational NGO “Culture and Contacts” organizing local, regional and international cultural projects to build bridges, raise public awareness and drive positive change.

>Languages: Georgian and English

Francesca Todde

 

Francesca Todde is a photographer, designer and publisher, based in Milano (Italy).
Her research focuses on the invisible elements of relationships, sometimes crossing stories of sharing with animals. Her practice is not limited to photography but includes in the creative process the editorial aspect and the diffusion in printed form. Her work is represented by Contrasto. She co-founded with the artist Luca Reffo the publishing house Départ Pour l’Image.
Selected publications include: British Journal of Photography, 6Mois, Le Monde, M le Magazine du Monde, DLui di Repubblica, Fisheye, Vogue, Zadig, Yet magazine.
Among her exhibitions: Cortona on the Move (IT), Circulation(s) (FR), Les Boutographies (FR), PVF Festival of Political Photography Helsinki (FI), 10x10 Photofestival (IT), SiFest (IT), Officine Fotografiche (IT), Foto-Forum Bozen (IT), BYOPaper! Arles Les Rencontres de la Photographie (FR), Looking On MAR di Ravenna (IT), Reflexions, CAMERA, Torino (IT), In_Cadaques Festival (ES); Les Nuits de Pierrevert Festival (FR).

www.francescatodde.com
www.departpourlimage.com

>Languages: French, English, Italian

Taiyo Onorato

 

Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs (both born 1979) have been working together as an artist duo since they met in Zurich University of the Arts in 2003. Their diverse projects are evolving around photography, also involving sculpture, installation, film and book publishing.Their work has been shown internationally in many galleries and institutions, among them solo shows in MoMA PS1 NYC, Kunsthalle Mainz, Foam Amsterdam, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Kunsthaus Aarau, CAC Cincinnati, Swiss Institute NY, LeBal Paris and KINDL Centre for Contemporary Art, Berlin.

They published several artist books, among them The Great Unreal, Continental Drift and Future Memories, all published by Edition Patrick Frey. Their books have been awarded with the Most Beautiful Swiss Book Award.

Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs received the FOAM PAUL HUF Award, Amsterdam 2013, and were shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, London 2017. They won the Swiss Design Award 2011 and the Fine Arts Award Kanton Zurich 2018. They regularly hold workshops and teach at many acadamies and Universities around Europe.

They live and work between Slovakia and Zurich.

>Languages: German, French, English, Italian

Martina Parolo & Andrea Galbusera

 

Martina Parolo began to photograph during her high school years, refining her passion and technique by graduating in New Technologies of Art first and then in Photography and Visual Design. Her research focuses on the female body and empty spaces as starting points to tell the intimate relationship with her own reality.

Freelance Photo Editor, she worked for two years at the Community Magazine "Perimetro" and then devoted herself to collaborations and personal projects. In 2021 she founded the crowdfunding platform for photographic projects "SelfSelf Books" where she holds the role of photo editor and coordinator.

Andrea Galbusera graduated from NABA in Art Direction, starting during his studies a working path in a communication agency and then setting up on his own in 2016 founding Andstudios Milano, a communication studio where he works for clients in the digital field with focus on multimedia design and content creation.

He bases his research experimenting with new uses of the digital and non-digital worlds, mixing graphics with user design looking for innovation in the mixed use of technologies and platforms.

He takes part in several independent projects and in 2021 founds together with Martina Parolo Selfself Books, a crowdfunding platform dedicated to the development of a new form of photo publishing.

Sidi Vanetti

 

ph. Matteo Fieni

Sidi Vanetti is part of a duo with Andreas Gysin: they work together on design and research projects without a particular purpose since 2000. They combine disciplines from the filed of visual communication, architecture and technology. Recent work explores images and patterns using the geometries of multipurpose displays, urban signage and found or forgotten objects.

What characterises their projects is that the intention is to not modify the layout (or visual organisation) of the chosen objects – they work with what the existing has to offer. Within these constraints they search for infinite visual permutation. Using only the given alphabet, Gysin-Vanetti build images, animations and generate patterns. Sidi Vanetti is born in 1975. He lives and works as a designer in Ticino, Switzerland. He believes in education and gives workshop in schools.

>Languages: French, English, Italian


Experts 2021

Melody Gygax

 

Portrait: ©Lucas Ziegler

Melody Gygax is the Swiss agent of MAGNUM PHOTOS. 

Photography has been at the centre of her life for over twenty years, first as a picture editor for various media for many years and most recently as head of photography at the Basler Zeitung.

As a photo editor/curator she now works with brands, advertising agencies, corporate publishers, photo galleries, cultural institutions and photographers, showing them how to take their visual storytelling to the next level.

Melody is a regular jury member for photography competitions, is active as a qualified juror, teaches photography in the areas of conception, editing & storytelling, photo editing and is a long-standing expert on various portfolio reviews and holds seminars at the most important photography festivals in Switzerland.

Languages: German and English

Lars Willumeit

 
Photo credit: Selina Willemse

Photo credit: Selina Willemse

Lars Willumeit is a curator, author, and art educator based in Switzerland. Since 2018 he has been curator at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne. With degrees in Social Anthropology (London School of Economics and Political Science) and Curatorial Studies (Zürcher Hochschule der Künste), his interests are in photography, documentarisms, regimes of representation, and visual cultures.

Recent curatorial projects include: Yann Mingard – Everything is up in the air, thus our vertigo, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne (2019); Salvatore Vitale –How to Secure a Country, Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur (2019); CO-OP, Unseen, Amsterdam (2017 + 2018). Recent written contributions include: Why not...gather together?!— Imagineering the (Un-)becomings of Photography as Arenas and Communities of Collective Meaning-Making and Collaborative Agency, in book Why Exhibit?, A.K. Rastenberger/I. Sikking eds. (FW-books, 2018); Wonderful to Watch — Some Notes on Ruin Lust and Creative Destruction in/of Photographic Realism, Andrea Botto, KABOOM (Editions Pierre Bessard, 2017). Willumeit is also editor of The (Un)becomings of Photography—On Reaggregating and Reassembling the Photographic and its Institutions (Foundation for Visual Arts, 2016).

www.larswillumeit.com

Languages: German, French and English

Alessia Locatelli

 

Alessia Locatelli is the artistic director of the Enrico Cattaneo’s archive and of Women Photography Biennial in Mantua (Italy). She managed some of the past editions of the SiFest (Savignano) and the Canon Award, specializing in photography and becoming Independent Curator in the organization of exhibitions with both public and private entities, in Italy and abroad; while in parallel the activity of curating and consulting continues for artists and photographers. She’s the signature of some art & photo magazines and critic of the Photography Dossier within the “CAM, catalog of modern art” published by the Editorial Giorgio Mondadori - Cairo Group.

She organizes and teaches in professional courses to become Photo-curator in photography schools and independent realities throughout Italy. She’s in the organizational team of Photolux Festival in Lucca, 2019 edition. She’s in charge of helping and assisting authors in the selection of Fine Art papers and for materials useful for conservation and sale to collectors.

Languages: Italian and English


Ann Griffin

 
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Ann Griffin works as a graphic designer specialised in editorial design.

Based in Zürich, she collaborates with publishers, photographers and artists on different book projects, with a particular interest in photography books.

She has also led numerous workshops in different art schools, and has been teaching at eikon, Fribourg for several years.

Since 2017 she is a committee member of near. (Swiss association for contemporary photography).

www.anngriffin.ch
www.near.li

Languages: Italian, French, German and English

Noah Stolz

 
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Noah Stolz is a freelance curator. In 2004 he founded la rada, spazio per l’arte contemporanea, Locarno, which

he left in 2012. He co-curated two editions of the visual arts programme of the festival Les Urbaines, curated many Art Awards in Switzerland and Italy and from 2009 to 2017 he take part to the Swiss Commission for the Arts. In 2014 he founded the Stella Maris Archive, a platform for production of art films and contemporary art events. Since 2015 he has been working with Marion Baruch as a collaborator, studio manager, and promoter of the artist actual work and her archive.

Languages: Italian, French and English

 

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