Photographic
Exploration /
© Juan Martín
The 12 selected emerging photographers will embark on individual research journeys, with project coordinators providing essential guidance to ensure the consistency, relevance, and depth of their work. The final curation will take place during the third workshop. The aim of this collaborative production process is to weave these individual visual narratives into a cohesive portrayal, fostering a collective visual narrative.
"What we save"
Arianna Sanesi
I am an artist using images, remnants, and words, I create “frescos” that evoke my subjects in a non-linear way. Through photography, to which I devote particular care, I bring to life publications, installations, and objects that, in some way, embody and make visible what would otherwise remain unseen—a feeling, a memory, an idea.
The aim of the project I’m proposing is building dioramas telling the story of LA DANA, the flood that invested Valencia’s suburbs at the end of October 2024, and the work put into being by restorers to save family albums damaged by water.
"Mar de algas"
Gema Galán
Mar de Algas engages with the rapid spread of Ruguloptery okamurae, an algae reshaping the coastal ecosystems of Tarifa. Often framed as a destructive presence, the algae is approached here instead as a witness and messenger of ecological imbalance. Its proliferation is closely tied to human activity. It is thought to have been introduced through global shipping and unsustainable fishing practices thus revealing the consequences of environmental disruption and shifting marine conditions. The project draws conceptually from the imagined voice of the algae itself. Rather than positioning it solely as a threat, the work considers how such narratives can displace responsibility, projecting blame outward while obscuring the human actions that enable these transformations. In this sense, the algae becomes a kind of narrator, an unfamiliar presence that reflects back theconditions that allowed it to thrive. Images produced using pigment derived from the algae itself remain unstable, gradually fading with exposure to light. Their slow disappearance mirrors the fragile and changing state of the marine environment from which the material originates. The work does not attempt to preserve or fix these images, butinstead allows them to shift, weaken, and eventually dissolve. Within this process, material and subject become inseparable. The algae is not only represented but actively participates in the making and unmaking of the image, carrying within it the traces of an ecosystem in transformation. What remains are impressions that resist permanence. Mar de Algas reflects on this theme of impermanence, ecological vulnerability, and the uncertain boundaries between cause and effect. It invites a reconsideration of how we position ourselves in relation to environmentalchange, not as distant observers, but as participants within its unfolding.
"Fûgels"
Jose Witteveen
In the summer of 2024, José Witteveen began Fûgels in southwest Frisia, the region where she grew up. During a three-month residency she immersed herself in the landscape, listening and speaking with more than a hundred locals, historians, and ecologists. A recurring theme was lânskipspiine – the pain felt when familiar landscapes are irreversibly changed by agriculture, climate change, and industrialisation.
From this, Witteveen started photographing mounted birds in museums, shown from behind as if they were human portraits. Her work asks: what happens when birds disappear? How do they remain in our collective memory? The project explores birds as both natural and cultural heritage, threatened by habitat loss and intensive farming. Through photography, etching, and collaborations with artists, writers, activists, and scientists, she connects art, ecology, and heritage.
Her research extends beyond Frisia, tracing birds in European folklore, songs, legends, and iconography. Ultimately, Fûgels is both an artistic study of disappearance and a call to rethink our relationship with nature.
"Dissolving landscapes"
Katrina Rinke
The Heritage Lens project presents “Dissolving Landscapes”, a new body of work by Latvian artist Katrīna Marta Riņķe, created in dialogue with the layered histories and fragile ecologies of Lubāns, the largest lake in Latvia. At the heart of Riņķe’s practice lies an inquiry into water as both a material and metaphor — fluid, ephemeral, and transformative. In this project, she turns her lens toward Lubāns, approaching the lake through a personal and experimental photographic process.
Working with analog image process, and printing on a Minolta DiAlta machine inherited from her grandfather, Riņķe connects family memory, technological lineage, and artistic experimentation into a single visual and conceptual thread. “Instead of seeking insane resolution and quality, I wanted to research the primitive and the simple approach with images — to prioritise presence, to slow down time, to make a decision where to be,” Riņķe reflects. “In doing so, I also began to look further into resilience — not only of the climate but also of our cultural heritage, often marked by neglect, fragility, and survival.”
The project also engages with immaterial heritage, sparked by Riņķe’s encounter with the Latvian National Centre for Culture’s 2019 collection of cultural values. This research led her to critically reflect on the wealth and poverty — both intellectual and material — inherited from previous generations. Through conversations with peers and mentors, as well as influences such as E.H. Gombrich’s The Story of Art, Riņķe situates her work at the intersection of amateur sincerity and professional mastery, questioning how artistic knowledge is preserved, transmitted, or dissolved over time.
By embracing alternative photographic methods, analogue imperfections, and inherited technologies, Dissolving Landscapes becomes an act of resistance against speed and standardisation — a meditation on memory, climate, and the resilience of both natural and cultural landscapes.
"Po Delta"
Marco Lumini
Marco Lumini’s research on the Po Delta began two years ago. After investigating issues related to water pollution in Northern Italy, his focus shifted to the Delta of the Po River. This is a fragile area, marked by complex weather phenomena, shaped and transformed by human intervention over the centuries, and today sustained by highly uncertain social, economic, and cultural dynamics.
Climate change is further altering this territory: droughts and floods, rising sea temperatures with the consequent spread of invasive species, the transformation of agricultural crops, and depopulation — which began as early as the 1950s — are redrawing its boundaries and its very possibilities of survival.
The project thus constructs a fragmented narrative of the Delta, a temporal portrait suspended between beauty and precariousness, fragility and transformation, seeking to convey a story imbued with a surreal and dreamlike atmosphere.
Michaela Nagyidaiová
Slovakia also holds a deep forestry legacy: under the Habsburg Monarchy, forest management was formalized, and in 1807, the first Central European forestry school was founded here. This project explores both the threats and resilience of Slovak forests through photography, archival material, and multisensory elements. Contemporary images will document rangers, activists, and students of forestry, while archival sources connect to longer traditions.
The narrative emphasizes community care for forests while reflecting my own bond formed through summers spent gathering mushrooms and berries with my grandparents. Special focus will be on species like spruce and beech, now endangered by rising temperatures, droughts, and fire risk. Ultimately, the work honors those protecting the forests while confronting ecological change, imagining futures rooted in care, adaptation, and responsibility.
"Spit"
Ola Skowronska
This violent yet eerily poetic history runs through the series as a reminder of the horror that we are facing in times of climate change. The project draws inspiration from Kobo Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes and Timothy Morton’s theory of "Dark Ecology", seeking to destabilize the Spit’s pastoral image.
Here, sand is no longer a passive surface but an active, almost sentient force. It creeps forward grain by grain, slowly yet relentlessly consuming what stands in its way. Entire homes, churches, and communities once disappeared under its weight, erased as if they had never existed; the sand carries with it the memory of suffocation, burial, and loss.
"Unearthed Seeds"
Pedro Marcano
"Unearthed Seeds"
Toivo Heinimäki
Cement production alone accounts for around 7–8% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and construction is responsible for one-third of Finland's carbon dioxide emissions. Societies everywhere are becoming more urbanised, and cities continue to evolve. Focusing on environments that were vibrant and engaging in his youth but now suffer from a lack of appreciation, Heinimäki asks whether valuing and reusing what already exists might be wiser than continually producing new.
Emma Charrin
Constanze Flamme
Mateusz Pecyna
