Julia Vandenoever

Julia Vandenoever

Dana Stirling

Still Breathing | Losing all family left me feeling alone and ungrounded. The year my mother died from cancer, I also lost my brother to a life of addiction. The people who knew me longest were suddenly gone. Our small family of three went to one marking the end of my family of origin.

Grief is a strange cocktail of emotions and it swallowed me. From cravings to wear all my mom’s handmade sweaters all at once in order to inhale her smell to hours of uncontrollable angry crying fits about words gone unsaid. I did not want to forget and I could not let go. I collected everything in her house I could from handwriting on scraps of paper, birthday cards, old perfume bottles to used tissues in pockets - the only pieces of my childhood left.

As I was swimming in grief, my own two children were growing up. Their gestures and experiences illuminated the fragility and duality of childhood - with every step of growth there is a loss. Observing their childhood transported me back to my own. I saw myself back in these moments with my mom and brother. I threaded together our two childhoods to preserve both theirs and mine. By recreating my memories, I put my family of origin back together again.

Still Breathing is a meditation on loss and remembering. Distilling the chaos was a healing process for me. I told my mom that she would not be forgotten. Still Breathing is my promise. www.juliavandenoever.com

Mariia Ermolenko

Mariia Ermolenko

Dana Stirling

Camouflage | I am inspired by how snow and fog change space. They dissolve everything without a trace. Hidden from our eyes, people, cities and animals seem to be protected from danger. When forests burn down and whole species of animals become extinct, I try to figure out how I could protect them. In the project, I enwrap in smoke, shroud, hide natural objects that seem vulnerable to me.
Now I think about protection.

I think about mimicry. Only a few species of animals and plants are capable of such transformation. What if everyone could protect themselves with adaptable coloring? I fill the snow-white space with awareness and diligence, like Japanese engravers, leaving only outlines and hints. As if running with an ink pen on a white sheet, I examine the fillability of emptiness.

Objects merge with the world, and we no longer notice them. We leave them alone. mariiaermolenko.com

David Barreiro

David Barreiro

Dana Stirling

An Inventory of Gaps | An Inventory of Gaps is a collaborative photo-book by Lucy Holt and David Barrerio. It was edited by Rut Blees Luxemburg and designed by Bakhtawer Haider and Magda Tritto and published by FOLIUM as part of the Royal College of Art’s Future Archive project. Having closely observed the construction of the new RCA building at Battersea over a series of site visits, participants of the project were invited to respond to the site in their practice. An Inventory of gaps is one such response. Combining images and text, the work looks at the ever-shifting nature of construction sites, which are often perceived as simply voids or holding spaces, looking closely at the poetry of the taps, textures and movements contained within. www.davidbarreiro.com

Michael Snyder

Michael Snyder

Dana Stirling

THE ANCIENTS | Trapped in my home for a year during the time of the pandemic, I took to long walks through the forest at midnight, when no one else was around. On these quiet escapes through field and fen, I found myself struck by the conspicuous fact that, throughout it all, here in the patient indifference of night, the trees, and the stream, and the little moth in pursuit of her moon, these things remain; they quietly endure. Confined to our boxes and lost in the mist of our own misfortunes, it has become easy to forget that out here, even in the depths of winter at night, we are surrounded and carried by innumerable beings and relentless forces far more ancient and awesome than we.

Sylvain Biard

Sylvain Biard

Dana Stirling

BADLANDS | My grandmother was buried in the cemetery of a small french village. That morning the white sky fell into confusion with the mists. Color had disappeared. She's here now surrounded by these roads while somewhere in family albums, one finds her presence in her father’s photographs. www.twennys.com

Mady Lykeridou

Mady Lykeridou

Dana Stirling

The island that takes me on journeys | I arrived on the island of Milos 18 years ago(2002). The search for the essence of the world, leads me to photograph every day everything that surrounds me on a piece of land edged between sea and sky.
150.6 km²
"Trapped" in paradise.
Born to travel.
Photography is the medium that allows me to travel as frequently as I need.

Everyday scenes under the Cycladic light, of a fleeting world in which every detail is related to the concept of birth, of transformation of life and death. Light, shadows and shapes which carry me back and forth in time. A green sea, a Venus appearing in my shadow, insects dying slowly …
Everything I look at, discover and become on the island. www.madylykeridou.com

Birgit Buchart

Birgit Buchart

Dana Stirling

Space Available | Space Available is documenting the current economic state of Manhattan's richest and most luxurious neighborhoods.

One afternoon late September, after my first visit to the MET since February, I walked down Madison Avenue and found myself in an overwhelmingly melancholic mood taking photos of all the empty spaces, which in the beginning of this year were still proudly displaying the wealthy and glamorous lifestyle of the Upper East Side.

I continued this series over the following week in Midtown and the West Village. By doing so, it became clear to me that this project was not only a matter of the documentation of an economic crisis but also a creative way to finally capture this strange, new, scary and sad feeling, I could never quite grasp or explain but have been carrying inside myself since March. The sudden emptiness, the distorted reflections of the "(new) normal life", the masks, the self-reflecting, the strong contrasts –– it has been a big mess, an emotional chaos, and so feels this series of reflections and contrasting worlds colliding. www.birgitbuchart.com

William Mark Sommer

William Mark Sommer

Dana Stirling

The Loneliest Highway | The empty stretch of road goes on for miles, nothing but the occasional sign or the passerby as the pavement beneath my tires breathes the melody of past motorists. The Loneliest Highway is my lyrical journey across Nevada finding solace in the emptiness along the Lincoln Highway in the wake of the Covid-19 Pandemic. This melancholy song is driven by the feelings of isolation that conveys the essence of the stay at home orders and the loneliness that came in seclusion afterward. Through these discoveries in loneliness along the road I was able to develop catharsis of the moment and empowerment to show this current time. Along this lonely road the lines move like a day in wait as I pass through the forgotten towns that align the highway, nothing to be said or heard but the whispers of what came before and a hope in betterment of tomorrow. www.williammarksommer.com

Mathias Strømfeldt

Mathias Strømfeldt

Dana Stirling

I always work with an immediate approach and let the motives arise. Street photography is a poor term, but nonetheless a genre that embraces the idea of ​​capturing the moment. And my whole photographic journey is about capturing the moments that touches something in me. I know right away if I am gravitated to a motive or not. I photograph for my own enthusiasm. The basic idea of ​​the isolated moment, which only happens once, motivates me. Therefore the analog medium is also my favourite. The nerve that is ingrained in pressing the shutter and waiting patiently for the development of the rewarding feeling and situation is fundamental. I do not want to manipulate or construct, but rather document. It should be the raw rendering or none at all.

This series is a visualization, of my first encounter with the country of Japan. It was photographed during the journey from Osaka in the west to Tokyo in the east, 2017. I observe and encapsulate moments, often with an observant distance. I do not imagine that I can capture a culture with my photographs, but I experience and try to understand through my camera. There is always an interplay between human beings and their environment. For me, it's about context and contrast. To frame the small stories that unfold in the larger tangle. It's a special thing, because I react to what catches my eye and it's really a very personal thing. It's just important to me that every single picture opens the door ajar for a story and that it leaves a feeling.
Besides my unreserved fascination and infatuation with the country. The journey left me with a sense of a complex symbiosis between calm and tensity. www.mathiasstromfeldt.com