Meet the artists nominated by Fotograf Magazine in 2023

They will join the platform’s activities to present their work to international professionals and to network, amongst other opportunities that will be developed for them, including exhibitions, publishing opportunities, portfolio reviews, and more.

The selection of talent is based on the artists' previous collaboration with Fotograf Magazine based in Prague. Publication in the periodical thus forms a filter through which talents from mainly Central European countries are further selected for the Futures platform. What is characteristic of our magazine, however, is the interest in themes reporting on the state of the contemporary world, and this is also reflected in this year's mix of new talents. Each represents a different and varied approach to work with their own visual expression often related to the personal genesis that led to the chosen topic.

Michaela Nagyidaiová is a Slovak photographer whose work analyses thorny path of a transformation of Central and Eastern Europe from communism to capitalism, as well as roots and migration of individuals. Michaela as a trained journalist and photographer is inherently using a visual investigation of the transformation of such a phenomenon. Similarly, she visually examines current ideologies and political systems that frequently shape layers of one’s upbringing, daily life, and native environment of countries that were formerly part of the ‘Eastern Bloc’. The project Moulding brings up neglected issues within contemporary society of the region that often influence one's mental health or way of living. It is an exploration of how the current circumstances in Central and Eastern Europe affect individuals, topography, and ideologies – how political apparatuses "mould" the layers of everyday lives in different forms.

Identity is a key theme to the artist Hiep Duong Chi, who is a second generation Vietnamese living in Czech Republic. As he states, photography is part of his life and even DNA through his grandfather, who ran a photography studio in Vinh in Vietnam and his mother as well. His series That time I wished I was a white butterfly deals with the imprints of symbols associated with Vietnamese culture, which are tested by their presence in a completely new conditions. By removing them from their original context, these motifs take on different meanings and point not to themselves but to the many perspectives through which they can be viewed. Only our own identity creates limits to the way we can read Hiep's photographs.

Veronika Čechmánková focuses on the changes of symbols and traditions over time, their transformations and possible meanings for the present. Within the series Flowers are not to be picked. Flowers are to be admired she plays with the metaphor of people, friends, models and plants. She juxtaposes fashion industry and, in her experience as a model, its exploited participants against the world of flowers. Veronica draws attention to the fact that we arrogantly assign meanings to nature, and thus to plants, the meanings that suit us, without ever thinking about the other side's position. Instead of being an essential part of the environment, the floral aesthetic has become a lifestyle and entertainment object that, through its spectacle, prevents us from rediscovering their and our own fragility.

With his own sensitiveness, Michał Patycki sets out to find specific situations and moods associated with intimate mental and physical experiences in his series entitled See how these memories affect your water. Bodies and shapes in his photographs seem to merge into gender indeterminate and new morphologies of conjoined bodies. Seemingly unrelated entities intersect in sometimes melancholic and sometimes mysterious compositions that are mostly slightly unsettling. The links implied are fragile and may therefore succumb to destruction or it may be a relationship of mutual intimacy that holds them together at least for a certain period.

Talent can lie not only in a way of visual representation, but also in the precise search for authentic and novel themes, which is where Noémi Szécsi is quite consistent and exceptional. She focuses on specific groups of people who can be seen as teetering on a certain edge of a society. Whether they are employees of a funeral home, far-right protesters or women intensely involved in magic. The latter, under the title It cannot rain forever, is what Noémi has been working on between Hungary and the Netherland for the last two years. The women in her photographs look determined and confident, but at the same time with a tangibly deep life experience. The artist aims to defend their position, which can easily be ostracized, but which at the same time hides a great attraction in the sense of being able to know and understand one's own destiny.

Markéta Kinterová
editor-in-chief

Co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, FUTURES is a platform focused on amplifying emerging talents in photography in Europe. Since 2017, the project has been offering a full programme to increase the capacity, mobility and visibility to various artists selected every year by leading art institutions across Europe.

FUTURES is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. The Swiss program is supported by Pro Helvetia.