Anaïs Tondeur’s approach is rooted in ecological thought. She is engaged in an interdisciplinary practice through which she explores new ways of narrating the world, that can transform our ways of relating to other living beings and the earth’s great cycles.

Composing a kind of awareness lab, she develops her work through research and fiction, presented in the form of walks, installations, photography or procedures related to alchemy.

Many of her projects thus spring from encounters, sentient occurrences with an element, a territory or other ways of knowing and perceiving the world. She thus
enjoys doing research, which leads to a state of amplified openness and attentiveness. Whether tracking real phenomena or imagined elements and characters, these subjects become guides into worlds that would otherwise remain out of reach and out of sight.

Her research protocols lead her on expeditions across the Atlantic, on the border of tectonic plates, to the Chernobyl exclusion zone, under the surface of Paris,
in polluted urban soils or under the atmospheric flow of anthropic particles. But when she cannot access the territories of her investigations, she creates fictitious vehicles, which travel for her. She thus sent a dream into space on board the Osiris Rex, a NASA spaceship.

She graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2008 and the Royal College of Arts in 2010 in London, won the Art of Change 21 prize and received the Cyber Arts Ars Electronica honourable mention in 2019. She has presented and exhibited her work in international institutions such as the Centre Pompidou, la Gaîté Lurique, Frac Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Frac Grand Large, the Serpentines Galleries (London), Bozar (Bruxelles,), the Biennale di Venezia, the Pavillon Français and the Nam June Paik Art Center (Seoul).

Her approach is thus inscribed in an interdisciplinary practice, collaborating with anthropologists and philosophers, geologists and mathematicians, bio-
geneticists and ecologists, oceanographers and astronomers through artist residencies or immersions in science labs.

Dmitry grew up north of Moscow, in an industrial village. At the age of 16, he wrote an article for a local journal about his friends who consumed heroin, thereby discovering a passion for journalism. He then studied philology but left university in his third year for a full-time journalism job. He worked for weekly Russian magazine Argumenty i Facty for four years.

He then left his hometown for a village close to Pskov, a small Russian town 12km away from Estonia, where he went on to work for eight years as an educator in an orphanage for handicapped children, which he narrated in his blog. In 2009, he launched a children’s village project.

In 2013, Dmitry open his Instagram account. It was unpretentious, yet it quickly rose to fame. Everything changed when he participated in the “Burn Diary” project, for which he photographed everyday life in the town of Pskov. It won him many prizes and photographic awards.

In 2015, Dmitry Markov received a scholarship from Getty Images and Instagram for his activity as a documentary photographer, which allowed him to continue documenting the system’s castaways.

In 2016, he was the first Russian photographer to participate in the Apple photography contest dedicated to iPhones. He was chosen by Apple for their Shot on iPhone advertising campaign. That same year, he won the Silver Camera grand prize and the philanthropic activist prize.

In his flow of daily photographs, Dmitry acts as a mirror, showing the harsh life of the Russian populations that he lives and works with, the people that pass beneath the radar. He draws up an unflattering yet realistic portrait of the inhabitants of the countries’ provinces.

He got into photography quite late, but this activity soon became a partner, a travelling companion, in all the “highs and lows” of his life.

Dmitry is a man who uses photography consciously: to bear witness, of course, but also for his own good, for he is honest enough to share his contradictions and weaknesses. His activism deeply permeates his work, some of his photos stage children and teenagers from orphanages in which he has volunteered.

He devours the world with his eyes, trying to find his place in it, and, thanks to the strength of his pictures, he manages to embark us on his story. He looks at his subjects in the same way he looks at himself, without condescension or moral judgement.

His practice consists in documenting scenes with his iPhone, then sharing them on his popular Instagram account where he describes his life as a man of his times. Dmitry Markov often captures intimate and light moments shared amongst

friends and strangers, emphasizing their humanity. Over time, he has created a multi-faceted self-portrait, searching for his own identity through the presence of others.

On 2nd February 2021, while he was protesting in front of the Moscow municipal courthouse where Russian activist Alexei Navalny was standing trial, Dmitry Markov was arrested by the police. While he was in custody, he took a picture which became viral when he posted it on his Instagram account which now has over 839 000 followers.

When Dmitry isn’t taking pictures, he volunteers as a social worker.

MAYCO NAING is a major figure in Asian photography. She was born in Burma in 1984
and now lives in France.

Mayco learnt photography when the universities were closed by the military, by getting a job in a photo studio for 3$ per month. She is now a famous photographer and teacher and has actively participated in all the Yangon Photo Festival sessions as an organiser.

She has received many prizes for her personal work and has exhibited abroad.

Marco Naing is an artist famous for her Identity of Fear portrait series, which captures the spirit of the Burmese generation born at the time of the 1988 revolution.

She got very little education, was taught conservative values, and turned of age under a repressive military regime. Using her newfound freedom of speech and wanting to share her experience, Mayco hopes to be able to train many citizen artists and photojournalists, especially in regions where ethnic minorities still face armed conflict.

For her, art is not merely a medium through which she questions the state of Burmese society, it is also a tool to change women’s place in society. During the 1st February 2021 coup, Mayco immediately took to the streets to capture the populations on the barricades. Mayco and her comrades were pursued by the military junta for having exercised their photojournalistic work. Many were arrested, others are on the run, and Mayco is hosted in an artist residency, far from her home and loved ones.

ISABELLE HA EAV is a French artist of Sino-Hispanic origin who lives in Marseille.

Isabelle Ha Eav trained as an engraver and then as a photographer, notably at the National School of Photography in Arles.

In her pictures, she explores the notions of presence and absence, impression, erasure and disappearance. She works with the history of photography, exploring the materiality of images. This translates into contemporary experiments, that interact with old techniques such as gum bichromate.

This technique, invented in the mid-19th century, combines the processes of photography and painting, using pigments, paintbrushes and brushes. The photograph is formed after the assembly of several layers of emulsion, allowing for a very peculiar density and depth in the resulting images.

Blending photographs, sculptures and experiments with the photographic medium, Isabelle Ha Eav’s work questions the body’s interactions with spaces, whether it be a living space, a transitional space, or a non-place. In a dialectic between the visible and the non-visible, the image interacts with its materiality through different experiences of the photographic medium.

Her work has recently been exhibited at the Yangon Photo Festival 2020, the Taïnan International Foto Festival 2019, and the Rencontres de la Jeune Photographie Internationale 2018. It has also been selected for the Human Photographic Prize 2020, the Voies Off Prize, the QPN Prize and the François Schneider Foundation’s Contemporary Talents Prize.

She then completed an artist residency at the Camille Claudel Museum.

PRINTEMPS BIRMAN (Burmese Spring) showcases 14 Burmese and Rohingya poets and 6 photographers,
all of whom have been exiled, imprisoned or assassinated by the military since the February 2021 coup. Their work is a testimony brimming with astonishment, anger and determination. Prefaced by novelist Wendy Law-Yone and edited by Mayco Naing and Isabelle Ha Eav, this book aims to give voice to the poets and photographers who are participating or have participated in the “Myanmar Spring” civil resistance movement, which was severely repressed by the ruling junta.

Printemps Birman was published in February 2022 by Marseille-based publisher Héliotropismes.

Gabrielle Duplantier studied fine arts and history of art in the university of Bordeaux.
Back then, photography, which she had practiced since a young age, was a mere pastime.

Once she got her diploma, she decided to become independent and settled in Paris, where she worked as a photographer’s assistant or as a set photographer.

On 2002 Gabrielle moved back to the Basque country. She was inspired by this beautiful and fascinating place and began a series of images where landscapes, people and animals were captured in impressionistic photographs.

Gabrielle Duplantier’s photographic world seems to be wilfully detached from historical or social reality. Thus, her topics are not really thematic; she is on a quest for beautiful images that exist for themselves, outside of any context.

Between “accidental” shots and dark room experiments, it took her time to develop her own photographic style, inspired by painters, an essentially feminine and intimate world which shows the magic of ordinary life, with a sombre use of black and white.

Parallel to her many collaborations with the press, publishers or musicians, Gabrielle Duplantier pursued her personal work on the female portrait, one of her favourite topics. Another source of inspiration is Portugal, her home country, which she visits on a regular basis.

Her work has often been exhibited and published in France and abroad. She published many books, such as Chapelles du Pays Basque and La mer console de toutes les laideurs with writer Marie Darrieussecq at Editions Cairn, Les enfants d’ici at Editions Lezards qui bougent, then in 2014 Volta (meaning “return” in Portuguese) followed by Terres Basses in 2019, both at Editions Lamaindonne.

In 2012, Gabrielle Duplantier appeared in MONO, published by Gomma books, a monograph of the best present-day black and white photographers, along with artists such as Michael Ackerman, Trent Parke, Anders Petersen, and Roger Ballen.

She also collaborated with the Temps Zéro collective, a collective artistic project which married sound to photographic or video images.

Gabrielle Duplantier is currently represented by Galerie 127.

In 1984, he entered the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, with the aim of becoming a press illustrator. However, the following year, a trip to Borneo, during which he lived with the Palawan people, the last jungle nomads, radically changed the course of his life.

The sedentary artist became a nomadic observer, and photography became his means of expression. While still a student at the Arts Décoratifs in Paris, he repeatedly made long trips to the Philippines jungle with the Palawan people. He spent a total of over four years living with them.

A first part of his work on the Palawan people was presented at the photo festival Les Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie d’Arles in 1988.

Pierre de Vallombreuse was secretary general of the Association Anthropologie et Photographie (Paris VII university), created by Edgar Morin, Emmanuel Garrigues, and Jean Malaurie. He published over a dozen books and exhibited his work in festivals, museums and galleries.

He regularly collaborates with important international magazines such as Newsweek, El Mundo, El País, La Stampa, Le Monde, GEO, Photo Answers, Figaro Magazine, L’Oeil de la Photographie and Camera International.

Since 1986, Pierre has relentlessly testified to the lives of indigenous peoples around the world. These indigenous peoples bear witness to the diversity of responses to living conditions imposed by nature and history.

Pierre de Vallombreuse unveils the complex reality of the way of life of these weakened peoples whose heritage is essential for us. He fights for their respect and their fair representation.

His work is like a wake-up call. It is structured around vast projects that are carried out over many years: Peuples, Hommes racines, Souverains, Badjao – une disparition silencieuse, La Vallée, W. Project USA. Their aim is to alert the public about the fate of these populations, for far from the primitive, exotic and archaic reality conveyed about them, the reality that he shows us through photography is quite different: it’s a fight for their survival.

These populations are indeed way too often the primary victims of genocides, war, racist ideologies, economic predation, food shortages and environmental disasters.
These are crucial issues which, rather than being limited to these faraway territories, pertain to our humanity.

Over 30 years, Pierre de Vallombreuse has constituted a unique photographic collection of 130 000 photographs of 43 indigenous groups the world over, which honours cultural diversity and reveals these peoples’ realities.

Her father was a photographer, and she in turn fell in love with photography from a young age. Dreaming of entering the military, she got a law degree in the
hope of passing the officer exams. But she ended up choosing photography and went to follow a course in London.

Her first experience in the field was in Afghanistan. She was sent there by the Lincolnshire Echo, the newspaper with which she was doing her final internship.

She worked there for three years and, since 2006, she has covered stories the world over, notably in Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Kashmir, Cameroon, Guatemala, Uganda, Mali, China, Haiti and other countries.

Véronique accepted these difficult missions bravely and also developed her personal projects in some of the most dangerous places on the planet. She often works with her friend, Manon Quérouil-Bruneel, a French journalist.

Manon Quérouil-Bruneel and Véronique de Viguerie split their tasks: while Manon writes, Véronique takes pictures. Together, they assemble their reports and travel the world on the lookout for new stories. Together they have been to Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Egypt, Brazil and Yemen, amongst others.

Véronique’s work is often published in Paris-Match, the New-York Times Magazine, Newsweek, El Pais, Stern, Der Spiegel, Figaro Magazine, Geo, Marie-Claire, Mail on Sunday, the Guardian, Optimum. She was especially noticed for having worked with the Taliban in Afghanistan, Pirates in Somalia, Petrol pirates in Nigeria and female assassins called Sicarias in Colombia, as well as the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad in Mali.

In 2006, she published her first book with Marie Bourreau, Afghanistan, Regards Croisés; published by Hachette.

In the summer of 2008, Véronique covered a story in Afghanistan for Paris Match which was polemical. Indeed, while she was with a Taliban group, the latter
ambushed a French army detachment and killed ten amongst them. Véronique asserts the integrity of her work as a journalist.

In autumn, she carried on with a story on pirates in Somalia, at a time when the topic was starting to gain a wide international reach. Her project on pirates was published in more than 40 platforms the world over, in over 20 countries.

Véronique has documented various topics such as petrol piracy in Nigeria, the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, the women’s rights defence group FEMEN, the LRA hunt (Lord Resistance Army), the medical-legal work on mass graves in Abkhazia or landmines in the Balkans. She also does documentation work on Western mercenaries who joined the Kurdish forces in Iraq in their fight against the Islamic State.

In 2011, Véronique de Viguerie and Manon Quérouil-Bruneel published their travel diary Carnets de reportages du XXIe siècle with Editions Verlhac, followed by a second one in 2015 called Profession reporters : Deux baroudeuses en terrain miné published at La Martinière.

In 2012, Véronique was chosen by HBO to be one of three photographers to partake in the Witness show for her work on the Arrow Boys in South Sudan.
In 2019 Reporters without Borders published their 60 th issue “100 photos for Press Freedom” dedicated to Véronique de Viguerie, for showcasing the risks taken by
journalists.

That same year, she once again published a book with Manon Quérouil-Bruneel, Yémen, la guerre qu’on nous cache with Editions Images Plurielles, and the following year, Iraq Insh’allah with the same publisher.

She started her career as an operating assistant on films such as Jayro Bustamante’s “Ixcanul”, which was awarded the prestigious Silver Bear at the Berlin Festival in 2015. In 2018, Marcello Martinessi’s film, Las herederas, which she worked on, was also awarded the Silver Bear prize at the Berlin Festival.

Parallel to her work on feature films, she developed many photo and video projects.

She notably participated in the workshops organised by the Void gallery with Antoine Agata and Akina publishing house with Kladvij Sluban.

Céline Croze is sensitive to the flaws in our society. She uses cinematographic codes to show a story, to transgress the world around her and immerse herself into the flaws of those she looks at.

Each photographic project resembles a human story. The dark and grainy landscapes, the underlit human bodies or the slightly uncomfortable close-ups are the result of instinctive decisions. When she takes pictures, Céline follows her animal instinct, on the brink of urgency and danger. Her images capture moment residues, they try to feel human flesh and trace the faces of wounds or of violence. For each project, Céline Croze wishes to get as close as possible to capture the atmosphere of a given moment.

For Céline Croze, a photographic series can be triggered by the slightest observation, the slightest piece of writing or encounter. For “Les Purs” (the pure ones), she was inspired by a recurring dream in which she felt surrounded by water and in danger. In the case of Nothing Happened, the visual story was associated with two touching poems.

By calling her series SQEVNV, Céline pays tribute to a young boy she met on a rooftop. She remembers these words that remain etched in her memory: “Siempre que estemos vivos nos veremos”, As long as we are alive, we will see each other.

Her mystical photography, inspired by moving images and the aesthetics of cinema, introduces the viewer into a hidden world, beyond that which can be seen or experienced.

Her various works as a photographer and videographer were presented at the Fès Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie, at the Casablanca Billboard Festival, at the Marrakesh and Paraguay Biennales, at Kassel festival, at the Fuam in Istanbul and at the Tangers Photography Foundation.

In 2019 Céline Croze won the Cadaqués festival with SQEVNV. In 2020, she was selected from amongst 100 emerging European photographers by Gup magazine and Fresh Eyes Photo Talent 2020 (book published in July 2020).

That same year, she received the revelation prize at the MAP festival and the Face à la Mer festival with the same series. She also received the Mentor prize for her Mala Madre project.

“Nothing Happened” was exhibited in April 2021 at the Rencontres de la Jeune Photographie Internationale in Niort (Villa Perochon). She was also selected by Claudio Composti for the Oscar Barnack Leica, and she was one of the winners of the Tremplin Jeunes Talents at Festival Planches Contact in Deauville in 2021.

That same year, she was also a finalist for the HSBC 2021 prize for “SQEVNV” and exhibited it in April at the Instantes Festival in Portugal.

In June 2022 she will exhibit SQEVNV ‘Siempre que estemos vivos nos veremos’ (As long as we are alive, we will see each other) at the Sit Down Gallery.

ARTISTIC APPROACH

“It always starts with a story. Slipping into the crack. Erasing oneself and tapping into world time. There’s this animal impulse which borders on urgency and cradles danger. Harvesting the residues of action, touching the Human, tracing the faces of wounds or violence, getting as close as possible and merely extracting the raw material. There’s imminence, the body in its territory, immersion into faraway and unknown times that are knocking on our door.

I extract a vision of the hidden world from my experience in film and fiction writing, beyond the limits of what we live and see.”

Born of an Egyptian father and a French mother, Édouard Elias spent ten years living in Egypt, in Charm el-Cheikh. In 2009, he returned to France to start studying business, while living with his grandparents who “made him watch documentaries on Arte television channel”.

He finally turned towards photography, which he studied at the École de Condé in Nancy. He developed a passion for war photography, inspired by Yuri Kozyrev, a Russian war reporter famous for his coverage of Chechnya and Iraq.

While he was still studying, and without being set an assignment, he left in August 2012 to report on the Syrian refugee camps in Turkey, then in Syria. When he came back, he showed his pictures of the rebel attack in Alep to photographers that he met at the Visa pour l’Image festival in Perpignan. Getty agency hired him and published his “Alep Martyr” story in Paris Match, Der Spiegel and The Sunday Times. He then decided to stop studying.

On the 6th of June 2013, while he was in the North of Alep for his fourth story, Édouard Elias was kidnapped by the Islamic State with Didier François, special correspondent for Europe 1. He was freed in April 2014 after eleven months of captivity.

He then covered various crisis and fighting zones for the biggest French media platforms. In March 2016, he immersed himself amongst the Mediterranean refugee rescuers, embarking on the Aquarius, a humanitarian boat chartered by the non-governmental organisation SOS Mediterranean to rescue shipwrecked migrants.

He also covered the escape of civilian populations around the Chad lake during the Boko Haram exactions, Doctor Mukwege’s hospital (2018 Nobel peace prize in the Democratic Republic of Congo), and closed educational centres for young delinquents in France. Recently, he worked on two enemy trenches that faced each other in the Donbass, Eastern Ukraine.

He is as attentive to the story collected from the subject as he is to its perception by his audience, and explores all the procedures that allow him to create a link with his stories that is more than just informative.

His approach involves a slow methodology, where intimacy with his subject matter creates an immersive practice in his photography, getting close to the stories in order to bear witness not only to a context, but also to emotions.

In 2016 he started to collaborate with Fanny Boucher, a rotogravure master. Thus, with their rotary printing press, they roamed France with educational projects for younger generations.

His pictures have been exhibited, amongst others, at the Centre National des Arts & Métiers in Paris, at the Pont du Gard site, at the Festival des Libertés in Brussels and at the National Museum of China in Beijing. They were also hosted by the Polka Gallery in Paris, at the Grand Palais, at the Michelangelo foundation in Venice and at the London Craft Week.

His work on the Foreign Legion and his coverage of the trench war in Ukraine were acquired by the Invalides Army Museum for their photographic archives.

Édouard’s work has been awarded the Remi Ochlik Golden Visa Prize at Visa Pour l’Image, as well as the Sergent Vermeille prize, which awards civilian and military photographers who go on missions with the French Army.

He was also invited to the World Press Photo Masterclass and was selected three times for the Bayeux Calvados-Normandy war correspondent prize, which honours journalists who work in perilous conditions to allow for access to free information.

Édouard Elias is represented by the Polka Gallery.

After studying photography at Dawson College, she developed her documentary style while working on long-term subjects in Nicaragua from 2014 to 2015, then between Cameroon and the Central African Republic from 2015 to 2021.

Her favourite topics are on the threshold between the visible and the invisible. She hopes to do justice to the complexity of the situations she tackles, to face them in an honest and empathetic way. Identity, mental health, human rights and the environment are intertwined in her projects, which capture the raw reality of the world. For Adrienne, photography is an uncompromising social commitment.

Her work has been published in many international platforms, including the Washington Post, Time, The Guardian, Le Monde, Le Monde diplomatique, Al Jazeera and The New Humanitarian.

Adrienne Surprenant also works for Médecins Sans Frontières, Greenpeace and the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees).

Her series have been exhibited in Canada, France (Visa pour l’Image, 2015) and England. She has received grants from the National Geographic Society, the Wellcome Trust, SCAM (Société civile des auteurs multimédia) and the International Women Media Foundation.

She has also completed two HEFAT (Hostile Environment First Aid Training) courses since 2017.

This year, Adrienne became a member of MYOP photo agency, which specialises in documentary photography and reporting.