California

  • Born and raised in LA, Cole Swanson is an award-winning independent filmmaker and creative director/founder of the fashion and art publication, Black Swan Magazine.

    Aside from his narrative work, Cole has worked with creative teams like Converse both in front of and behind the camera. Cole also works intimately with Universal Music Group and °1824 creating content for artists such as James Blake, Selena Gomez, Big Sean, Lana del Rey, and more.

    Cole studied Film & Television Production at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and England's very own National Film and Television School with a focus on writing and directing.

    Cole’s Website: www.coleswansonart.com

  • Kyla Rain is a 21-year-old interdisciplinary artist and curator currently based in Los Angeles, California. Much of her personal work explores themes of internal dialogue and evolution, finding inspiration in the intimate moments spent both alone and with others.

    When she’s not creating work of her own, you can find her pouring her soul into her independent publishing company - Pure Nowhere.

    Kyla’s Instagram: @kyla.rain

    Kyla’s Website: http://purenowhere.com

  • Lauren Kim is an interdisciplinary artist mainly working as a photographer, designer, and creative director.

    She began her journey into the arts at a young age, through painting, drawing, and scenic design explorations. During high school, she picked up a love for photography and graphic design, slowly beginning to fine tune her interests and hone in on her personal style.

    After graduating from UCLA with a B.A. in Design and Media Arts in 2019, she moved to Highland Park, where she currently resides and works as a freelance creative full time. She is most interested in developing work that incorporates rich color, unique texture, thoughtful composition, and references to psychology/mental health. In addition, she is committed to creating immersive visuals that cultivate curiosity, as well as nod to her unending fascination with the human experience, and the breadth of emotions that come with it.

  • SJ Spreng is a visual artist and creative director from Northern California, currently based in Los Angeles. Her primary work is in photography as well as brand and creative development for music artists and meaningful brands. In her art, she is enchanted by experimental methods of translating photography and digital art into tactile, physical pieces. Her current fascination is alternative printing photographic processes, such as cyanotypes and silk-screening. Often shifting between visual genres, SJ’s art is exploratory and deeply personal. The throughline of her work is a love for the human body, nostalgia, and practicing thoughtful vulnerability.

    SJ received a degree in Communications from the University of Wisconsin and is self-taught in photography and videography, considering this one of her strongest assets as a creative partner. She values fluidity and the bending of technical practices in all of her assignments. Aside from her personal work, SJ has worked with a growing list of clients, including Atlantic Records, Savage x Fenty, Calvin Klein, and PAPER Magazine.

    Her current project is an ongoing series of nude self-portraits titled FEATHERWEIGHT. It began as an exercise in healing from the trauma of being physically assaulted. Ultimately, the project has turned into a personal study of vulnerability, fragility, strength, and beauty. FEATHERWEIGHT is meant to honor how intense and divine it is to be delicate sometimes and to chronicle what it looks like to learn to honor that.

Philippines

  • Felezedad Caridad, a self-taught artist from Quezon City, Philippines, was born in 2001. She is the third generation of her kin that grew into the laborious life of sourcing metal scraps and disposed materials as their primary source of income. This inspired her to create work that encapsulates the struggle, the desire for ending suffering, and the suffocation from the mundane.

    Felezedad Caridad is a self-aware escapist, unafraid to depict the repulsion for deprivation and the aggressive nature of undoing the generational.

  • Jeff “Wipo” Baligad is an interdisciplinary artist from Manila. His body of work ranges from abstraction, collaborations, conceptual and experimental; references and ideas from episodic memory, uncertainty, and perception. He uses variety of materials and mediums, processes and methodology depending on curation, current research or project. His works intend to produce and challenge new ways of thinking and imagination.

 
  • Colin Dancel is a photographer and image-maker from Manila.

    She began her career as a fashion photographer, focusing mainly on behind-the-scenes images and capturing the many moving parts of running a fashion show. Her fascination for both movement and what happens behind closed doors slowly developed to photographing dance and self-portraits.

    Rilke put it into words perfectly, “Think dear sir of the world you carry within you [...] what goes on in your innermost being is worthy of your whole love”. Colin Dancel’s body of work is grounded in introspection, understanding of self, and its relationship with everything else.

    She recently exhibited her work with Nude Floor (2021) and Futur:st (2021). Currently, Dancel is working on a project entitled Forms of Grief, as a grant-recipient of Angkor Photo, Cambodia.

  • Mariano Batocabe is an Artist-Curator based in the Philippines.

    Through mediums of drawing, installations, and photography, he inquires into the present and potential realities of history, culture, and identity. His works were exhibited in different places around the Philippines, and in countries such as Indonesia, Austria, Canada, and Malaysia among others. Batocabe is also the co-founder of Para://Site Projects, a collective that has been organizing and curating projects in alternative and unconventional spaces for collaboration and discourse since 2016.

  • Aia Solis is a freelance photographer with a nursing degree. She worked as a medical representative, a waitress abroad, and a nurse for three years, all of which while pursuing her own photography. After being slumped against unwanted circumstances, she eventually took a leap of faith and started working full time in photography; shooting brand campaigns and online content, portraiture and lifestyle, wed-

    dings and events.

    She started taking photos of herself in her teens out of vanity. Growing up chaotically, she eventually realized that seeing herself in a photograph was integral for her to befriend and overcome her demons. How she saw changes in herself was a relevant part of the process. Always hoping to reap the benefits of self-growth.

  • Pau Villanueva (he/him/his) is a queer Filipino photographer who documents the plight of society’s most vulnerable. Pau’s works are an exploration of the human condition -- the discovery of self, of others, of the mountains of differences in between, and the empathy through which we cross them.

    Pau is a National Geographic Explorer currently working on a documentary exploration that tells the stories of gender expansive Lumad from Mindanao, exploring the intersectionality of queer and cultural identity in indigenous communities that have suffered from displacement, loss of ancestral land, and conflict. He is also a mentee for 2021 Women Photograph Mentorship Class, a participant of the 15th Angkor Photo Festival, and a member of Diversify Photo and Authority Collective.

  • Gab Mejia (b. 1996) is a Filipino conservation photographer, visual storyteller, and engineer. His documentary work and publications focuses on stories on the climate crisis, endangered wildlife, and the intersectionality of individuality, society, culture and the environment.

    He is a National Geographic Explorer, Nikon Asia Ambassador, and an Emerging League Fellow in the International League of Conservation Photographers. He currently resides as a Board of Trustee for the World Wide Fund for Nature-Philippines working on environmental conservation efforts in the island nation. Gab continues to explore alternative narratives and depictions of the oneness of humanity with nature through stills, motion, and written words— hoping to gain a deeper understanding of our shared relationship with nature.

    Gab’s Website: www.gabmejia.com

    Gab’s Instagram: www.instagram.com/gabmejia

Ghana, Africa

  • Born in Jamestown - Accra to Ghanian Parents, Kwame Acheampong is a passionate photographer and artist who captures his images and communicates his artistry through the lens of his iPhone camera. Kwame’s work is a representation of his evolving sense of depiction of ideas and artistic influences, and readily explores experimentation as an approach to aesthetics.

    Kwame is was named as one of the Dazed 100 Photographers in 2020 and is represented by ARTGENCE.

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

  • Andy Nguyen (he/him) is a visual artist specializing in filmmaking and photography from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Currently a film student based in Toronto, his short films "heroes" and "it's a girl!" both shot on 16mm, were selected to be apart of TIFF Next Wave Film Festival and Inside Out Film Festival in 2021 and 2022. As a Vietnamese trans person, Andy wishes to continue in creating more projects that reflect on gender and cultural identity, while also portraying themes of vulnerability and intimacy.

 

Hanover, Germany

  • Born 1996 in Tehran, Shirin migrated to Germany at the age of seven. Since then, she has lived a parallel existence between two cultures. Her interest in Photojournalism grew during her early teenage years and got more visible after she took her first class in photography in 2011.

    In 2016 she moved to Tehran for a year to understand her country of origin. She contributed as a freelancer to the BORNA News Agency in Tehran and explored the country with her camera and heart.

    Shirin works as a freelance photojournalist since 2018. She is mostly interested in topics around women's issues, identity and everyday heroes and their battles. Her work has been published in Stern Magazin, Zeit Online, Weser Kurier, Krautreporter and brandeins. In 2022, Shirin joined the Jury of the German Youth Photo Prize. Last but not least, Shirin enjoys keeping diary and asking questions.

    Shirin is based in Hannover, Germany, and available for assignments and collaborations worldwide.

    She speaks Farsi, German, English and a little bit of French.

    Member of Diversify Photo, Fotobus Society, WomenPhotograph and Kollektiv Versager.

    mail@shirinabedi.com

    +49 1578 2398 101

 

Melbourne, Australia

  • J Davies (b. 1994) is a queer, agender, First Nations (Māori) photographic artist living and working on stolen lands of The Kulin Nation (in Melbourne, Australia).

    J graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree of Fine Art from The Victorian College of The Arts in 2017 and has been exploring and experimenting with photography since 2008.

    Through the use of analogue and instant photographic processes, J is developing a body of work that highlights and celebrates the importance of queer life and community. Creating this work relies on the development of safe spaces and intimate relationships between artist and subject, which has shaped the artist’s practice into one of empathy and collaboration.

    Contact: jaydaviesart@gmail.com