Submissions for the 2025 edition of Verzasca PHOTO-MATCH are now open til 4th of August!

Verzasca Foto Festival joins forces with Fotofestiwal Łódź. After several successful editions in Łódź the innovative PHOTO-MATCH concept is landing in Switzerland for the first time.

Unlike traditional portfolio reviews where encounters are often random, PHOTO-MATCH is designed to foster meaningful exchanges between photographers and experts through a mutual selection process — ensuring that both parties share a genuine interest in each other’s work.

20 selected photographers will connect with 10 international photography experts in a dynamic and curated format.

Applications are open now — the deadline is 4th August. The results will be published the 6th August.

DATES : 05 – 06 SEPTEMBER 2025

LOCATION : SONOGNO – VALLE VERZASCA (SWITZERLAND). The presence on place is mandatory.

SUBMIT NOW

Unlike traditional formats, where pairings between artists and experts are often random or based on chance, Photo-Match is a fresh take on classic portfolio review – a format that breaks hierarchies trough meetings that are based on real, mutual interest.
At is core, The Photomatch model brings new life into the traditional formula of portfolio reviews by placing special emphasis on a series of open networking events and public presentations.
This event is based on a democratic and horizontal structure, free of charge, in which experts and artists have the same space for sharing and pitching their experience, work and motivations. By the end of the day, both have a word to say on who they want to meet.
DAY 1: PRESENTATIONS + MATCHING
[ 5th of September 9:00 AM. – 12:30 PM. CET ]
It’s a day dedicated to both photographers and experts to introduce themselves, their work and practice through short live presentations.
This moment takes place not only for Photo-Match participants, but also for anyone from the audience of Verzasca Foto who wants to attend the event therefore ensuring that photographers and reviewers can widen their group of spectators.
Based on these introductions and their own impressions, each participant will choose the reviewers (in case of photographers) or the artists (in case of experts) with whom they would like to meet and share their work, through a matching process. By the end of this day each attendee will have 5 meetings (reviewers) or 3 meetings (photographers) scheduled for the next day.

DAY 2: MEETINGS
[ 6th of June 8:30 AM. – 11:30 PM. CET ]
The real deal! All participants attend private meetings in accordance with the timetable generated based on choices made on the previous day.
The application consists of:
1. An application form filled in (link available HERE).
2. A preview of 10 photographs from the project you would like to present during the review, sent in a JPG or PNG format, preferably size of 1920 px length, in a separate email to portfolio@fotofestiwal.com until August 4th 2025, titled: VERZASCA PHOTO-MATCH APPLICATION FIRST NAME LAST NAME. Files should not exceed 10 MB in total.
3. There is no submission fee and the presence in Verzasca is mandatory.
4. We accept submissions as an artistic duo.
5. It is possible to submit more than one project, as long as the projects are filled in separately, one form per project.
6. Each application is analysed by a group of 3 people from the team of Verzasca Foto, focusing on the images and the project description, while safeguarding the personal information. This information will only be considered at a later stage in the selection of artists, for contact and communication purposes.
7. The selected artists authorise the festival to choose two of their submitted images to be used in the communication of the finalists, with the necessary adjustments for its promotion according to the festival’s design. The credits and the potential changes are always referred to.

Portfolio Reviewers 2025

Diana Poole

Diana Poole
is a Zürich-based Art Advisor specialising in photography. She supports private and corporate clients as they build and grow art collections, advising on the acquisition, management and presentation of modern and contemporary photography.
Before establishing her practice in 2013, Diana worked for over a decade as director, curator and artist liaison for contemporary and photography galleries in London, Zürich and New York (most recently Edwynn Houk gallery), participating in leading international art fairs such as Art Basel and Paris Photo.
In 2024, she co-founded Der Greif Studio, which curates, produces and installs photography and video art from Der Greif’s global community of emerging artists in hospitality and workspaces. She supports the team in concept creation, curation, project management and artist-led events that activate the projects within these spaces.
Diana is a member of the APAA (Association of Professional Art Advisors) and Spectrum (Association for Photography in Switzerland).

Brian Paul Lamotte

Brian Paul Lamotte
is an independent graphic designer & publisher specializing in art and photography books. Educated in graphic design at London’s Central St. Martins, he established his creative practice in New York and is currently based in Milano.

His process-based practice relies on a close collaboration with artists, editors and printers, and often emphasizes the haptic qualities of print through the use of materials, hand-done treatments and specialized production. His design approach utilizes extensive visual and production research paired with image-led solutions and minimal typography.

Giulia Brivio

Giulia Brivio
is a curator, editor, and producer specializing in artist's books and photography.
Since 2013, she has been the photo-book editor and chief curator at Artphilein (Switzerland), a cultural center for contemporary photography that includes a publishing house, a public library, a bookshop, and exhibition spaces.
In 2009, she co-founded Studio Boîte (Italy), a publishing house and research studio focused on editorial practices. Until 2017, Boîte was a magazine dedicated to contemporary visual arts; since 2014, the Studio has been devoted to the creation of artist's books and curatorial projects related to publishing, including The Art Chapter – Milan Art Book Fairfor BASE.

In 2025 she co-founded Harmattan - Togo Photo Festival, that is going to take place in Lomé (Togo) in December 2025.
From 2018 to 2022, she taught Editorial Design at NABA – Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan.
From 2011 to 2014, she was Project Manager at the Fiorucci Art Trust (London), where she oversaw the Volcano Extravaganza residency program in Stromboli. From 2005 to 2011, she was in charge of the Archive of Italian Artists at Viafarini DOCVA (Italy).

Nicolas Polli

Nicolas Polli
is a Swiss photographer, graphic designer and publisher Nicolas Polli (1989) studied Art Direction at the Ecole Cantonale d'Art de Lausanne (ECAL). In 2012 he co-founded the photographic magazine YET with Salvatore Vitale. In 2016 he began developing an independent studio, Atelier CIAO, specialising in editorial design and still life photography with a focus on design and luxury.

In 2018 and 2020, he received a Swiss Design Award. After experiences with several publishers, he founded his own publishing house CIAO PRESS. He teaches photography and photobook design in various universities. Since 2021 he has been an artist in residence at Atelier Robert in Biel.

Marta Szymanska

Marta Szymanska
is a photography curator from Poland. She has been creating Fotofestiwal - International Festival of Photography in Lodz since 2004 and Fotofestiwal Collective since 2017. The Collective tests democratic, non-hierarchic models of cooperation and managing cultural projects.
Marta is responsible for Fotofestiwal’s programme. She gained much experience in curatorial practices and management as a vice-director of the Archeology of Photography Foundation (2014-2019).
Marta is also a regular contributor to Sputnik Photos, an international collective of photographers from Central and Eastern Europe. Marta is an active portfolio reviewer and she supports artists in their creative process. Her main interests include activist and engaged practices, archive-based projects, and photography from Central and Eastern Europe.

Amelie Schüle

Amelie Schüle
has been the Director of Photoforum Pasquart in Biel/Bienne since 2023. In this role, she oversees a dynamic program dedicated to supporting emerging and mid-career photographers while promoting contemporary photography. Her work focuses on the intersection of artistic production, culture, and society, with an emphasis on empowering people to actively engage with social structures, politics, and their surroundings.
Before joining Photoforum Pasquart, Amelie worked at Foam Photography Museum and Unseen in Amsterdam, where she curated exhibitions, developed public programming, and supported emerging talents. She also has experience in the gallery sector in Switzerland.
Amelie holds a master’s degree in Curatorial Studies from the Zurich University of the Arts. Beyond her institutional roles, she is actively involved in the photography community, participating in portfolio reviews, mentoring artists, and guest lecturing.

Simone Azzoni

Simone Azzoni
graduated in Modern Literature and Philosophy in 1996. He is an art critic and, since 2012, professor of Contemporary Art History at the IUSVE Pontifical University. Since 2023 he has been a professor of Aesthetics of Visual Arts at the Santa Giulia Academy of Fine Arts (Brescia). Azzoni also teaches Critical Reading of Images and History of Art at the Palladio Institute of Design in Verona (since 2005). In 2021 he is a professor of History of Graphics within the Master Publishing Journalism - Cultural Management at the University of Verona.
He is the co-Founder, Artistic Director and Curator of Grenze - Arsenali Fotografici, artistic director of the multidisciplinary space Il Meccanico. Among the recent publications, "Frame – Videoarte and surroundings" was published by the University publishing house, "Stretch marks" by Mimemis and in 2021 "Theatre and photography. Conversations with Enrico Fedrigoli” and, for LazyDog “The hen's gaze” and in 2024 “Wim Wenders: 1964-1984” catalog of the exhibition of the same name he curated in Verona. His teachers and points of reference are the scholars/masters of Kitsch: Roberto Togni and Gillo Dorfles.

Ann Griffin

Ann Griffin
works as a graphic designer specialized in editorial design. Based in Zürich, she collaborates with publishers, photographers and artists on different book projects, with a particular interest in photography books. She has also led numerous workshops in different art schools, and has been teaching at eikon, Fribourg for several years.

Since 2017 she is a committee member of near. (Swiss association for contemporary photography).

www.anngriffin.ch
www.near.li

Emmanuelle Halkin

Emmanuelle Halkin
is a graduate of the École du Louvre and the Sorbonne in art History. She is an independent curator and editor. In 2014, she joined the artistic direction of Fetart collective, which supports emerging photography, notably through the Circulation(s) festival held annually at CENTQUATRE PARIS. From 2017 to 2021, she co-created and developed The Anonymous Project, a color slides archive, and created many exhibitions and editorial projects based on this collection, including the exhibition The House at Rencontres d'Arles in 2019.
Since 2023, she has been artistic director of Rencontres Photographiques du 10e in Paris for Fetart. And since 2022, she has also been associate curator of Diaphane, an Art center dedicated to Photography in the Hauts-de-France region in France.

Naoise O'Keeffe

Naoise O’Keeffe
is the founder of Hot Potato, a photography led publication that engages with politics through visual storytelling. She pursued an MA in Photography at the University of the West of England. Naoise is currently a freelance photography editor at the Financial Times Weekend Magazine and was previously the photography director of Port magazine. She also works as a module leader and associate lecturer, teaching photography within photography and anthropology courses at universities including Goldsmiths, London College of Communications, Kingston, and UWE. Naoise frequently designs and facilitates creative, interdisciplinary workshops for photography programmes, she is a mentor for emerging talent and regular guest speaker at photography events.

Portfolio Reviewers 2024

Danaé Panchaud

Danaé Panchaud is a Swiss exhibition curator, museologist and lecturer specialising in photography, and the director of the Centre de la photographie Genève. She served from 2018 to 2021 as director and curator of the Photoforum Pasquart in Biel, Switzerland. She trained in photography at the Vevey School of Photography before completing a bachelor’s degree in visual arts with a specialisation in curatorial practices at HEAD – Geneva University of Art and Design. She later studied museology at Birkbeck, University of London, earning a master’s degree in 2017. She has held positions in several Swiss institutions in the fields of contemporary art, design and science, including the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, where she was a research associate from 2007 to 2012, the Gallery SAKS in Geneva in 2012-2013, and the mudac in Lausanne, where she was in charge of the public relations from 2012 to 2017.

As a free-lance curator, she has curated exhibitions for several Swiss museums, independent spaces and galleries, and written critical texts for monographs of contemporary artists, exhibition catalogues, and thematic publications such as Flora Photographica, co-authored with William Ewing and published by Thames & Hudson in 2022. She was a lecturer at the Vevey School of Photography from 2014 to 2018.

>Languages : French, English

Margherita Guerra

Photography curator and digital marketing expert, working in Switzerland and Italy. With a Bachelor in Theology, a Master Degree in Photography, and a Master in Digital Marketing, she worked for 10 years at the historical photographic Alinari Archive in Florence. She then founded Yourpictureditor, a company specializing in photography research and copyright management for publishers. 7 years ago she founded the Fotofestival Lenzburg, in Switzerland, which she direct.

>Languages : Italian, English, German

Kateryna Radchenko

Since 2015 – founder and director of the international festival Odesa Photo Days.
2023 – World Press Photo Contest jury member (Chair of Europe region)
Curated exhibitions in Ukraine, South Korea, Sweden, Georgia, France, Canada, Latvia, Poland, The Netherlands, Germany and UK.

As an author, she has published articles in several international magazines and online platforms, such as Fotograf, Magenta, EIKON, British Journal of Photography, FOAM Magazines, Over. In collaboration with the Finnish Museum of Photography wrote the book Images Tells Stories. In 2022 together with Christopher Nunn and Donald Weber published two volumes of The Information Front.
She has participated as a Portfolio Reviewer in many different photo festivals such as: Riga Photo Month, Lodz Photo Festival, Suwon Photo Festival, Photo Wien, Landskrona Photo Festival, Kranj Photo Festival.

>Languages : English,

Giuseppe Oliviero

Giuseppe Oliverio (Bologna, 1985) is the Founder and Artistic Director of PhMuseum and PhMuseum Days International Photography Festival. Since 2012, he has led the organization to develop their renewed Grants and Education Programs. He has further conducted workshops in Argentina, Brazil, Italy, and in the Middle East. He has been a juror of awards such as Lucie Photo Book Prize, Magenta Foundation's Flash Forward, Blow Up Press Book Award, LensCulture Critics' Choice, United Photo Industry The Fence, and Cortona Happiness OnTheMove. He has worked as a portfolio reviewer for Futures Photography, Unseen, Photo Vogue Festival, Fotografia Europea, and Visa Pour L'Image. He has written for TIME magazine and L'Uomo Vogue.

>Languages : Italian, English

Anna Kostantinova

Anna Konstantinova is a curator based in Zurich. Her professional interests include photography and post-photography, process-based and participatory art and digital curating. She is a part of the Swiss photographic collective pool, the curatorial team of the contemporary photography collection of the investment company Vontobel and the contemporary art gallery Lullin + Ferrari. She holds an MA in Media Studies from the Russian State University of the Humanities and MAS in Curating from Zurich University of the Arts.

>Languages: German, English, Russian

Julie Bonzon

Born in Switzerland, Julie Bonzon, Ph.D. is an art historian, photography curator, and writer. Following a Masters in History of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London (2015), she completed an AHRC-funded Ph.D. in the History of Art at University College London (2020), specialising in South African photography. A book based on her research, titled The Market Photo Workshop in South Africa and the 'Born Free' Generation: Remaking Histories was published by Routledge Photography in 2023. Bonzon has led curatorial and education projects at Magnum Photos, The Photographer’s Gallery, The Ian Parry Scholarship, The Olympic Foundation for Culture and Heritage, and The Sharjah Architecture Triennial.
She worked at the London gallery Messums as Director of Photography, setting up a new photography department representing international artists, and has since 2019 collaborated with private collectors alongside her curatorial activities.
In 2020, she founded The Photographic Collective, an online platform featuring lens-based artists living and working in Africa.

>Languages : English, German, French

FURTHER REVIEWERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED SOON

Portfolio reviewers 2023

Matjaz Krivic

Matjaz Krivic is a documentary photographer capturing long-term stories of people and places. For 25 years he has covered the face of the earth in his intense, personal and aesthetically moving style, portraying poor parts of the world characterised by traditions, social unrest and religious devotion. In recent years he has been focusing on conservation and environmental issues and acting as an advocate for a greener future through his work.

His work and multimedia projects were exhibited in galleries, museums, open-air exhibitions in Slovenia and across the world, at international photo festivals like La Gacilly Photo, Les Rencontres d’Arles and Visa pour l’image, and were widely published around the world by numerous national and international media outlets including National Geographic, BBC, Wired, Boston Globe, Geo, Guardian, Stern, Spiegel, Le Figaro, Le Monde, Newsweek, GQ, Internationale, D-La Repubblica, Wall Street Journal, Forbes and many others. Krivic has won several prestigious awards, including World Press Photo, Picture of the Year International, and Lens Culture.

He has been judging several international photo competitions, occasionally giving out photography workshops around the world and has co-created a first Bolivian photo festival FotoFestival Manzana1 where he is a creative director.

Catalina Martin-Chico

Franco-Spanish, Catalina began her career at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York.

Yemen was her reporting territory from 2007 to 2017. Her immersion at the Yemeni revolution earned her the ICRC's Visa d'or humanitaire in 2011.

After years in the Muslim world, from Morocco to Iran, Yemen and Egypt, Catalina turned to Latin America.

Winner of the Canon Woman Photojournalist Award in 2017, about her project on FARC ex-combatants in Colombia. Her images were exhibited as part of Visa pour l'Image Festival and around the world.

This work won the "Contemporary issues" prize at Worldpress 2019, and one of the photos was nominated for "Photo of the Year". The project was a finalist for the 2020 Oskar Barnack, Global Peace Award and Alexia Foundation.

In 2021, Catalina won the POY LATAM award with her work on the Sarayaku indigenous people in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

In 2022, she won a grant from the Centre National d'Arts Plastiques for a project on youth in Chile, as well as the "Grande commande photographique" from the French Ministry of Culture and the BNF for her work on outdoor schools.

The photojournalist has been a regular contributor to French and international press.

>Languages: French, English, Spanish

Stefano Stoll

Stefano Stoll (born in 1974 in Zürich, Switzerland) is Founder, Director and Chief Curator of Images Vevey, in Switzerland. This dynamic brand has 4 main activities: a biennial, an award, a permanent exhibition space and a publishing house.

Since 2008, Stefano Stoll has made monumental outdoor installations the speciality of the visual arts biennial. Every second year, Images Vevey proposes site-specific outdoor and indoor photographic installations in Vevey’s streets and parks, on the facades of its building, in its museums and galleries, and even in Lake Geneva. He has collaborated with artists such as Cindy Sherman, Dayanita Singh, Christian Marclay, Hans-Peter Feldman, Paul Fusco, René Burri, Lee Friedlander, Ryoji Ikeda, Alex Prager, JR, Erwin Wurm, Lebohang Kganye, Daido Moryiama, Christian Boltanski, Martin Parr, Bettina Rheims, Alec Soth, Thomas Struth, Bertien van Manen, Carmen Winant and Gillian Wearing among others.

Besides managing the Grand Prix Images Vevey, one of Europe’s longest standing grants for photographic creation, he created and curates a permanent off-space dedicated to contemporary photography (L’Appartement – Espace Images Vevey). He is currently developing Images Vevey’s own publishing house, committed to assist innovative editorial projects, in particular with the creation of the Images Vevey Book Award. Several Editions Images Vevey books have been shortlisted for the prestigious Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation Awards, one of which won the “Best PhotoBook of the Year 2020” Award.

In 2021, he co-curated Images Gibellina in Sicily, an Italian version of the Swiss biennial. He is regularly invited on international juries and chaired, for example, the Paul Huf Award (Amsterdam). He is a member of AICA and writes on cultural policy, visual arts and photography. In 2019, he published The Book of Images (Koenig Books London), a dictionary of visual experiences featuring the 299 artists from 39 countries who took part in Images Vevey projects between 2008 and 2018.

>Languages: Italian, French, English

Marco de Mutiis

Marco De Mutiis is Digital Curator at Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland where he leads the museum research on digital and networked images. He leads and co-curates different projects and platforms expanding the role and the space of the museum. These include the collaborative live stream programme Screen Walks (developed and co-curated with Jon Uriarte, curator of digital programmes at The Photographers’ Gallery in London), as well as Fotomuseum’s current experimental platform [permanent beta] The Lure of the Image.

He is a researcher and doctoral candidate at the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image at South Bank University where he focuses on the relationship between computer games and photography. He co-curated with Matteo Bittanti the group exhibition How to Win at Photography – Image-making as Play, exploring the photographic act through the act of play and the notion of games.

He has written, edited and contributed to several publications, including the recent book Screen Images – In-Game Photography, Screenshot, Screencast (co-edited with Winfried Gerling and Sebastian Möring). He lectures and teaches regularly in different institutions and schools, including Master Photography at ECAL and Camera Arts at Lucerne University of Applied Arts and Design.

>Languages : Italian, German, English

Francesco Giusti

Born in 1969 Francesco Giusti lives in Milan, Italy.

Documentary photographer oriented toward the investigation of contemporary, social and identity related issues. He has explored different approaches and practices in photography: from photojournalistic essays to portrait stories, from long term documentary based projects to experimental researches. He has worked primarily in Africa, in Europe and the Mediterranean, in the Caribbean region and in Latin America. He has been awarded with prizes from different organisations such as the World Press Photo in 2010, Voies Off Arles/Prix de la Critique 2016, and others. His works have been exhibited in galleries, public institutions and international events such as Rencontres d’Arles 1999, Visa Perpignan 2000, Festival di Fotografia di Roma 2006, Fotografica Bogotà 2010, Houston Fotofest 2011, 4th Fotofestival Germany 2011, FIFV Valparaiso Chile 2013, Photovisa Festival Russia 2014 & 2018, Getxo Photo 2015, Voies Off Arles 2016, Indian Photo Festival 2017, and others.

He has run workshops in Italy, Egypt, Kenia, Germany, France, Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Bolivia. He is professor of photography at NABA (Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti), Milan, Italy.

He collaborates with Prospekt Photographers.

>Languages : Italian, English

Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner is a self-taught photographer with a multidisciplinary approach. Since 1998, he has been collaborating with Barbara Meyer Cesta under the "Haus am Gern" label, while continuing his personal work as a photographer and video artist. He has had numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Kunsthalle Bern and the Foto-Forum St. Gallen. His work has been shown at Rencontres d'Arles, Photographers Gallery London, Kunsthalle and Kunstmuseum Bern and at apexart, New York.

>Languages : German, English

Nadine Wietlisbach

Nadine Wietlisbach devises exhibitions, publications and other discursive formats in the fields of contemporary photography and art. She is Director of Fotomuseum Winterthur since J2018. From 2015 till 2017 she was the Director of Photoforum Pasquart Biel/Bienne, following her post as a curator at the Nidwaldner Museum in Stans.

She founded the independent art space sic! Raum für Kunst in Lucerne in 2007. Curatorial fellowship at MoCP in Chicago (2017), work for the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia in South Africa and Mozambique (2007/2008). Winner of the Swiss Art Award 2015.

>Languages : German, English

Sébastien Peter

Sébastien Peter (1984) is an art historian, curator, and cultural promoter. He graduated in Art History from the University of Lausanne and Fribourg and obtained a MAS in Art Market Studies from the University of Zurich. From 2016 to 2021, he has held the position of Deputy Delegate for Culture of the city of Biel/Bienne. Additionally, he has worked as an expert in visual arts for Pro Helvetia.

In 2013, Sébastien co-founded the art space Sonnenstube in Lugano, where he served as co-director, organizing numerous exhibitions and concerts until 2017. He has also curated exhibitions and music programs in independent art spaces throughout Switzerland and has collaborated with auction houses, galleries, and specialized magazines. In 2021, he created the biennial La Regionale, an art exhibition in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, and in 2023 he was one of the promoters of Straordinaria - Tour Vagabonde.

Starting from May 2023, Sébastien Peter holds the position of Director of Cultural Services of the City of Locarno and the city museums.

>Languages : Italian, English, French

Danaé Panchaud

>Languages : French, English

Urs Stahel

Urs Stahel is a freelance writer, curator, lecturer and consultant. Curator of MAST – Manifattura di Arti, Sperimentazione e Tecnologia – in Bologna, consultant of the MAST collection of industrial photography, Advisor to Foto Colectania, Barcelona, and to the Collection of Art Vontobel, Zürich.
He is the co-founder of Fotomuseum Winterthur and was its director and curator from 1993 to 2013. He lives and works in Zurich.

He is curator of many exhibitions and author/editor of numerous books, for example by Paul Graham, Rineke Dijkstra, Joachim Brohm, Luigi Ghirri, Zoe Leonard, Roni Horn, Anders Petersen, Shirana Shahbazi, Astrid Klein, Ai Weiwei, Stefan Burger, Amar Kanwar, David Goldblatt, Hans Danuser, Claudio Moser, Boris Mikhailov, Sharon Ya'ari, Lewis Baltz, Thomas Ruff, Dayanita Singh, Jitka Hanzlova, Valérie Jouve, E.O. Hoppé, W. Eugene Smith, Thomas Struth, Richard Mosse or on topics such as "Hybrid", "Uncanny" "Trade", Im Rausch der Dinge", "Darkside I + II", "7P - 7 Places, 7 Precarious Fields", "The Power of Images", "Pendulum - Moving Things, Moving People", "Face Control" and "Uniform", about the role of working clothes in industry and society.

>Languages: German, French, Italian and English

Peter Pfrunder

Peter Pfrunder, born in Singapore, studied literature and popular culture at the Universities of Zurich, Berlin, and Montpellier (France). He worked as a journalist before he was appointed director of the Fotostiftung Schweiz / Swiss Foundation for Photography, Winterthur, in 1998. Under his direction, the Foundation has become the leading national heritage institution for photography in Switzerland, commissioned to take care of more than 100 archives of outstanding photographers.

Peter Pfrunder has published a wide range of books and essays on historical and contemporary photography. He curated over 40 exhibitions in the premises of the Foundation in Winterthur, but also in international museums in Europe, China and India as well as in photography festivals, such as the Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles. Peter Pfrunder lives and works in Zug and Winterthur, Switzerland.

>Language : German, French, English

Vera Bianda

Vera Bianda (1987) is a graphic designer and partner at Theredbox communication design studio. Her work ranges from editorial design for books and catalogs to the planning and execution of installations; from corporate design to signage projects; from websites to interactive installations.

Thanks to her projects, she collaborates with artists and photographers on an international level.

As a member of the board of directors of the Biennale dell’immagine di Chiasso, she coordinates and promotes the festival and related events.

> Language : Italian, English

Lars Willumeit

Lars Willumeit is a curator, author, and art educator based in Switzerland. Since 2018 he has been curator at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne. With degrees in Social Anthropology (London School of Economics and Political Science) and Curatorial Studies (Zürcher Hochschule der Künste), his interests are in photography, documentarisms, regimes of representation, and visual cultures.

Recent curatorial projects include: Yann Mingard – Everything is up in the air, thus our vertigo, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne (2019); Salvatore Vitale –How to Secure a Country, Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur (2019); CO-OP, Unseen, Amsterdam (2017 + 2018). Recent written contributions include: Why not...gather together?!— Imagineering the (Un-)becomings of Photography as Arenas and Communities of Collective Meaning-Making and Collaborative Agency, in book Why Exhibit?, A.K. Rastenberger/I. Sikking eds. (FW-books, 2018); Wonderful to Watch — Some Notes on Ruin Lust and Creative Destruction in/of Photographic Realism, Andrea Botto, KABOOM (Editions Pierre Bessard, 2017). Willumeit is also editor of The (Un)becomings of Photography—On Reaggregating and Reassembling the Photographic and its Institutions (Foundation for Visual Arts, 2016).

www.larswillumeit.com

>Languages: German, French and English

Alessia Locatelli

Alessia Locatelli is the artistic director of the Enrico Cattaneo’s archive and of Women Photography Biennial in Mantua (Italy). She managed some of the past editions of the SiFest (Savignano) and the Canon Award, specializing in photography and becoming Independent Curator in the organization of exhibitions with both public and private entities, in Italy and abroad; while in parallel the activity of curating and consulting continues for artists and photographers. She’s the signature of some art & photo magazines and critic of the Photography Dossier within the “CAM, catalog of modern art” published by the Editorial Giorgio Mondadori - Cairo Group.

She organizes and teaches in professional courses to become Photo-curator in photography schools and independent realities throughout Italy. She’s in the organizational team of Photolux Festival in Lucca, 2019 edition. She’s in charge of helping and assisting authors in the selection of Fine Art papers and for materials useful for conservation and sale to collectors.

>Languages: Italian and English

Sidi Vanetti

Sidi Vanetti is part of a duo with Andreas Gysin: they work together on design and research projects without a particular purpose since 2000. They combine disciplines from the filed of visual communication, architecture and technology. Recent work explores images and patterns using the geometries of multipurpose displays, urban signage and found or forgotten objects.

What characterises their projects is that the intention is to not modify the layout (or visual organisation) of the chosen objects – they work with what the existing has to offer. Within these constraints they search for infinite visual permutation. Using only the given alphabet, Gysin-Vanetti build images, animations and generate patterns. Sidi Vanetti is born in 1975. He lives and works as a designer in Ticino, Switzerland. He believes in education and gives workshop in schools.

>Languages: French, English, Italian