Portfolio Review

Katy Hundertmark is a Scottish-German artist and managing editor of Foam Magazine. Her work has been exhibited at venues such as Streetlevel Photoworks Glasgow, Stills Edinburgh, Seenfifteen London, Macro Testaccio Rome and her writing has been featured in magazines like Quottom Magazine, Notes Journal, and Studies in Photography.

Valerio Vincenzo, based in Paris, holds the position of Director of Photography at GEO France curating stories and commissioning assignments to photographers worldwide. As a photographer, Valerio has worked on several long term documentary and artistic projects, most notably “Borderline, Frontiers of Peace” a decade-long project on Europe, now a book, a touring exhibition and a European workshop program.

Claudia Küssel is an Amsterdam-born art historian, curator, writer, editor, and producer in the field of contemporary photography and visual arts. Currently, she is based in Budapest.
Before moving to Hungary, she worked for institutions such as Fotomuseum The Hague, Nederlands Fotomuseum Rotterdam, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Foam. She has curated many solo and group exhibitions and collaborated with artists such as Noémie Goudal, Dafna Talmor, Peter Puklus, Dana Lixenberg, Sara Cwynar, Hans Eijkelboom, Erik Kessels and Thomas Mailaender.
She has contributed to publications such as Peter Puklus, Handbook to the Stars (2012 and 2020), Photobloc, Central Europe in Photobooks (2019), Erik Kessels/Thomas Mailaender, Europe Archive (2023), and magazines such as Foam Magazine. She is regularly invited to juries, lectures, and workshops.

Alejandro Acín is founder-director of IC Visual Lab (ICVL), an independent photography platform recently appointed to lead the second edition of Bristol Photo Festival.

With ICVL, Alejandro has produced curatorial & publishing projects with Bristol Museums & Archives, Arnolfini Gallery (UK), Eastside Projects (UK), Format Festival Derby (UK), Getxophoto international festival (Spain) & Photo Kathmandu (Nepal), with support from Arts Council England, Historic England, Heritage Lottery Fund & the British Council.
Since 2023, he acts as the new Bristol Photo Festival Director, its second edition is produced and managed by IC Visual Lab.
Beyond ICVL, he has a track record of managing and activating historic collections, including Historical Photographs of China 1850-1950 (University of Bristol), the Martin Parr Foundation library, The Nepal Picture Library and the British Empire & Commonwealth Collection. Acín has produced personal projects exploring ideas around collective memory and politics and his work has been exhibited in Colombia, France, the UK and Spain. His latest book The Rest is History was included in the best books of the year at PhotoEspaña 2022 and Les Rencontres d'Arles in 2022. He is also an Associate Lecturer on the MA Photography programme at the University of South Wales.

Claire is an exhibition curator, member of the artistic direction of Collectif Fetart since 2016. Within the Collectif Fetart Claire participates in the curatorship of the Circulation(s) Festival, which takes place every year at 104 in Paris, but also of other events organized by the collective, she is notably at the origin of the creation of the festival's photo studios.

In 2021, Claire created the international and free photo festival Les Mesnographies, an open-air photo festival, which takes place each year in the large park of the village of Mesnuls, in the department of Yvelines (78) and for which she ensures artistic direction.

Claire also volunteers with young people to fight against school dropouts in difficult suburbs, through photo workshops.

Alexis Vasilikos is an Athens-based fine art photographer and the co-editor of Phases magazine, an online publication that focuses on international contemporary photography. He is represented by CAN Christina Androulidaki Gallery.

Sylvia Sachini is the curator of the Book Program of the Athens Photo Festival.
She is a curator, publisher and educator based in Athens. She is the founder of MISC Gallery and the Artistic Director of the Makryammos Ephemeral Art Residency, and was a co-founder and a member of the photobook publisher Void from 2016-2021. She has curated art exhibitions in Greece and abroad and has published the work of photographers worldwide.

Sylvia’s interests lie in theoretical conceptualisations of national and transnational identity formation. She approaches art history through its intersections with printmaking history, material studies, the theory and practice of graphic arts and typography. As a teacher, she explores the process of developing a photographic narrative in book form and exploring the limits of photography as a means of representation.

Sam Mercer is an artist, curator and producer. Since 2014 Sam has been working on the Digital Programme at The Photographers’ Gallery, London, curating a number of projects for Media Wall and online, and was assistant curator for the exhibition All I Know Is What’s On The Internet. In 2019/20, he co-curated Data / Set / Match, a year-long programme of commissions that sought new ways to present, visualise and interrogate scientific image datasets, followed by Imagin(in)g Networks (21-22), Aarati Akkapeddi - A-Kin (2022) and Between Worlds (2023).

Sarah Gilbert is features photo editor for the Guardian with over 20 years experience. Previously, she was a picture editor at Conde Nast, many UK based magazines, book publishers and newspapers, and spent several years as the Guardian US Photo Editor. She has been a regular juror on leading photography competitions and reviewer throughout Europe, America and Africa, was a mentor on the Women Photograph programme, and guest lectures at London universities.

Her specific areas of interest include portraiture and photo-documentary projects, and photo essays that focus on social, economic and climate issues, especially from emerging artists and under-represented communities, but any genre of interesting, creative and clever work is welcomed. She is less interested in reviewing fashion, travel or nude photography. Otherwise, she is always seeking to be surprised!

Witty Books is an independent publishing house founded in 2012, previous Witty Kiwi, with the intention of promoting contemporary photography and visual culture. In fact, in addition to publishing, it pays considerable attention to image education through workshops and masterclasses. During almost ten years of activity Witty Books has collaborated with young and established artists, from all over the world.

Tommaso Parrillo (1989) studied photography at Fine Arts Academy in Naples. In 2012, he founded the publishing house Witty Books and in 2015, he co-founded Jest, an exhibition space dedicated to photography. He currently lives in Turin and works as a publisher, teacher, and book designer.

Lars Lindemann is a Hamburg based curator, exhibition maker and creative director. At the moment he's working on a number of exhibition projects inside and outside of his native Germany. Lars has been a jury member for various national and international photo contests, including the Prix Carmignac and the World Press Photo Award in 2020 and 2021. He was GEO magazines Director of Photography from 2015 till 2023. Lars is one of the founders of the Hamburg Portfolio Review and International Projects Curator of the Italian photo festival Cortona On The Move.

Natasha Christia is a curator, writer and educator based in Barcelona. She holds a BA in archaeology and art history from the National Kapodistrian University of Athens, an MA in modern art and film from the University of Essex and a postgraduate diploma in publishing from the University of Barcelona.

Ηer curatorial research focuses on both the complicity and potential role of the photographic document in the revision of dominant historical narratives and ideological myths. She has curated various exhibitions, among them, AMORE: An Unfinished Trilogy by Valentina Abenavoli (Void/Athens Photo Festival, 2017), Dragana Jurisic: My Own Unknown (Centre Culturel Irlandais, Photo Sant Germain, 2017), Reversiones (Centro de la Imagen, Mexico DF, 2017), Lukas Birk: Travelogue Sammlung (Galerie Lustenau, Austria 2018) and You Are What You Eat (Krakow Photomonth 2019), ACTS I-VII by Oculi, (PHOTO 2022 Ιnternational Festival of Photography-Benalla Gallery, Australia), Kate Nolan: Lacuna (Centre Culturel Irlandais, Photo Sant Germain, 2023. Since 2021, she has been developing thematic areas based on photobooks: Closed Circle-Lived Relation (Panoramic Festival, Barcelona, 2021); War at a Distance (SCAN Festival 2022); and This Story Will Never Get Finished (SCAN Festival 2023). Natasha Christia regularly contributes essays on photography criticism for international publications and for artists. In 2019, she edited with Lukas Birk (Fraglich Publishing) “Gülistan” (winner of the PHotoEspaña Best Photobook Award 2019, International Category). She has been jury members of Unseen Dummy Award, Kassel Dummy Award 2021 and Concurso Fotocanal 2020.

Celina Lunsford is a curator of photography and other media. She is the artistic director of the Fotografie Forum Frankfurt, a major photographic art center since 1992. Lunsford is responsible for the exhibitions program, the FFF Academy and co-curator for the RAY Triennale. Diverse global perspectives in photography have long been present in artists she chooses to exhibit or support. Additionally she edits and writes for artists.
Lunsford has been a juror and nominator for many prizes, including the Shpilman International Prize and the Prix Pictet; she has curated and written for other organizations such as Fundación Mapfre, Fundación Telefonica, Photography Festival Lodz and Lianzhou International Photography Festival. She writes for photographers and has mentored for Olympus Recommended Award, the Joop Swart Masterclass and ASEF (Asia-Europe Foundation) Forum for Photographers.
Recent publications include, Ideologies: RAY 2021 (Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg, 2021), Peter Fink. My Mind’s Eye (Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg, 2020) and Picture Languages, Photographic Art from Georgia (Societäts Verlag, Frankfurt, 2018).
Lunsford was 2010-2018 the Vice President of the DFA (German Academy of Photography). In 2022 Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences named her Honorary Professor.

Christian Maccotta is the Artistic Director of Boutographies, a festival dedicated to European creative photography since 2001. He is a photographer himself and a graduate of the National School of Photography in Arles. Holding a master's degree in research focused on photography, he has been writing for numerous artists for fifteen years.

Bettina Freimann is an independent curator and sinologist who lives and works in Hamburg.
As co-curator of the artspace Âme Nue, she has realized numerous exhibitions in Hamburg featuring international and local artists and photographers since 2016. Among them were Moshtari Hilal, Robin Hinsch, Joséfa Ntjam, Lu Yang, Tabita Rezaire, Buhlebezwe Siwani, Lorna Simpson, Hoda Tawakol, and Ye Funa.
Since 2021, she has been working as an independent curator and has realized solo shows for photographers Claudius Schulze Traces of Fragility and Parisa Azadi Ordinary Grief as part of the 8th Triennial of Photography Hamburg 2022. Additionally, she curated the performance Seeing / Unseeing with Isaac Chong Wai and the group show Clear River, Calm Sea as part of CHINA TIME 2022. In 2023, she curated the group show In Our Hands featuring works by AVAH Collective, Ursula Biemann, and Rami Hara at Fotofestiwal Lodz.
Since October 2022, she has served as the project manager for the 9th Triennial of Photography Hamburg 2026.

Stamatis Schizakis studied history and theory of art and photography at the University of Derby and art history at Goldsmiths College. He completed his PhD at the University of Sunderland, on the subject of the introduction of new technologies in art in Greece. He works as a curator at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, since 2005. He has curated the exhibitions Bia Davou, Retrospective (2008) (co-curated with Tina Pandi), George Drivas, (un)documented (2009), Angelo Plessas, The Angelo Foundation: School of Music (2011), Rena Papaspyrou, Photocopies straight through matter (2011), Georgios Xenos, Procession No 163 & Thousand Images (2012), Phoebe Giannisi – TETTIX (2012) Dimitris Alithinos, A Retrospective (2013) (co-curated with Tina Pandi), PLEXUS Petros Moris – Bia Davou – Efi Spyrou (2015) (co-curated with Tina Pandi), Mikhail Karikis - Because we are together (2023), as well as the screening Terrhistories-Greece as part of the 26th Festival instants Video in Marseille (2013). Since 2017, he realizes the First and Last and Always Psiloritis Biennale.

Eduardo Cadava is an author, translator, curator and teacher.
He is Philip Mayhew Professor of English at Princeton University. He is the author of, among other books, Words of Light: Theses on the Photography of History, Paper Graveyards, and, with Sara Nadal-Melsió, Politically Red. He has co-edited Who Comes After the Subject?, Cities Without Citizens, and The Itinerant Languages of Photography. He also has introduced and co-translated Nadar's memoirs, Quand j'étais photographe, which appeared under the title When I Was a Photographer, and has curated installations and exhibitions at the MAXXI Museum in Rome, the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia, Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, the Al-Ma'mal Center for Contemporary Art in East Jerusalem, and the Princeton University Art Museum.
He is co-directing, with Eyal Weizman, a multiyear project on the relation between political conflict and climate change titled Conflict Shorelines that includes field work in Amazonia, the Negev desert, and the Arctic, and collaborating with Fazal Sheikh on a project titled Exposure that is documenting the ruination of the Utah landscape by uranium mining and oil and gas drilling and the consequences of this ruination on native communities.

Maren Lübbke-Tidow works as an author, critic and curator in Berlin. Her main focus is on contemporary photography and its manifestations in the visual arts. Her texts appear in magazines, catalogues, artists' books and occasionally in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Together with Rebecca Wilton, since 2020 she has been running the online-interview project Lighting the Archive on forms of archiving the photographic. Since 2021, she has been Artistic Director of the biennial photo festival European Month of Photography in Berlin. From 1997 to 2016, Maren Lübbke-Tidow was closely associated with the Camera Austria project as an editor and curator, from 2011 to 2014 as editor-in-chief of the magazine Camera Austria International (Graz). In addition to her extensive text work and exhibition activities, she has taught at various universities and art academies over the past ten years.

Christina Töpfer is an editor, writer, and sometimes curator in the field of photography and contemporary urban topics. Since 2013, she has been working as an editor for Camera Austria International, a quarterly published magazine which contributes to current debates on the role of photography as a cultural technique and practice of contemporary art. Since 2018, she has served as the magazine's editor-in-chief. Her interests revolve around the manifold dimensions of photographic images, their political and social entanglements, the questioning and re-actualization of archival images, and the challenges photography faces against the backdrop of the digital.

Born in 1980, Manolis Moresopoulos has been directing the Athens Photo Festival and the Hellenic Centre for Photography since 2011.