About the speakers
Yumi Goto is an independent photography curator, editor, researcher, consultant, educator and publisher who focuses on the development of cultural exchanges that transcend borders.
She collaborates with local and international artists who live and work in areas affected by conflict, natural disasters, current social problems, human rights abuses and women’s issues. She often works with human rights advocates, international and local NGOs, humanitarian organizations and as well as being involved as a nominator and juror for the international photographic organizations, festivals and events.
She is now based in Tokyo and also a co-founder and curator for the Reminders Photography Stronghold which is a curated membership gallery space in Tokyo enabling a wide range of photographic activities.
Anne Nwakalor is the Founding Editor of No! Wahala Magazine, one of Africa's first-ever contemporary photography magazine dedicated to showcasing authentic visual stories told by African creatives. She is also a Photo Editor and presently works as a Communication Expert within the development space in Nigeria.
Salvatore Vitale (b. 1986, Palermo, Italy) is a Swiss-based visual artist, editor and educator. In his multi-layered artistic practice and research, Vitale’s work focuses on the development and complexity of modern societies exploring power structures, political cosmologies and technological mediation, whilst making use of expanded documentary analysis, including elements of fiction, speculative storytelling and the use of multiple visual forms. His work has been awarded internationally, including the Swiss Arts Council grant (2015-2016), the PHmuseum Award (2017), Swiss Design Awards (2018), Foam Talent (2018), Punctum Award (2018), and Pro Helvetia Shanghai Research Grant (2019-2020). Vitale’s work has been exhibited widely in museums and at photo festivals, with solo shows at the Swiss Foundation for Photography Winterthur (2018), Fotomuseum Winterthur (2020), Fotogalleriet Oslo (2020), the Photoforum Pasquart Biel/Bienne (2017), MOCAK – Museum of Contemporary Art, Krakow (2018), Hamburg Triennale of Photography (2018). Vitale is a lecturer at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU) where he leads the Transmedia Storytelling programme. Vitale is also the co-founder and editor-in- chief of YET magazine, a Swiss-based international photography magazine that focuses on the evolution of the photography practice within the contemporary art field.
Bieke Depoorter (1986, Belgium) received a master’s degree in photography at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent in 2009. Three years later, when just 25 years old, she was made a nominee of Magnum Photos, of which she was named a full member in 2016. Depoorter has won several awards and honors, including the Magnum Expression Award, The Larry Sultan award and the Prix Levallois. She has published four books: Ou Menya, I am About to Call it a Day, As it May Be, and Sète#15. She worked together with Aperture, Editions Xavier Barral, Edition Patrick Frey, Lannoo, Hannibal and Le bec en l’air to publish these books.
In her ongoing project Agata, that revolves around a young women Depoorter met at a striptease bar in Paris in October 2017, she explores her interest in collaborative portraiture. It’s an example of Depoorter’s interest in finding people that can work with her in telling a story. These stories are always partially hers, and partially theirs.
Sohrab Hura’s vivid, sometimes surreal photography explores his position with the world that he exists in. Though Hura initially worked through the prism of social documentary, he soon turned his strong vision inward, creating visual journals of his life and personal relationships as a means to “find his own logic”.
Hura’s work has been shown in exhibitions around the world. Upcoming exhibitions include The Levee at Cincinnati Art Museum, The Lost Head & The Bird at True/False Film Festival: Columbia Missouri and La Fete Du Slip, Laussane and Snow at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge UK—all in 2019. He has published three books to date: Life is Elsewhere (2015), A Proposition For Departure (2017), Look It’s Getting Sunny Outside!!! (2018) with the fourth, The Coast, being published this year.
He is currently working on a series called SNOW, which looks at Kashmir through the prism of the arrival and melting of snow across the three phases of winter.
Alec Soth’s work is rooted in the American photographic tradition that Walker Evans famously termed “documentary Style.” Concerned with the mythologies and oddities that proliferate America’s disconnected communities, Soth has an instinct for the relationship between narrative and metaphor. His clarity of voice has drawn many comparisons to literature, but he believes photography to be more fragmented; “It’s more like poetry than writing a novel.”
Much of Soth’s work is tied to an interest in the photobook and in 2008, he started his own publishing company, Little Brown Mushroom. His major series have all become critically acclaimed monographs; the first Sleeping by the Mississippi, was published by Steidl in 2004, NIAGARA (Steidl, 2006), Broken Manual (Steidl, 2010), Songbook (MACK, 2015), I Know How Furiously Your Heart Is Beating (MACK, 2019).
Soth has received fellowships from the Guggenheim, McKnight, Bush, and Jerome Foundations and was the recipient of the 2003 Santa Fe Prize for Photography. His photographs are represented in major public and private collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the National Gallery of Art. His work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the 2004 Whitney Biennial and career surveys by Jeu de Paume (2008), Walker Art Center (2010) and Media Space (2015).
Ana Casas Broda, from Spanish and Austrian origin, lives in Mexico City since 1974. She studied photography, painting and history. As author she has published the photobooks Álbum and Kinderwunsch, that have been presented as solo shows in Spain, Mexico, Austria and other countries. Her work has been part of many collective exhibitions in diverse countries. Her work has received several awards and included in many books and publications such as Hometruths, Autofocus, curated by Susan Bright, among many others.
Along with her own work, since 1990 she has dedicated herself to the coordination of activities related to photography, such as: educational programs, seminars, workshops, conferences, grants, mentorships at institutions such as Centro de la Imagen, Mexico; Círculo de Bellas Artes, Spain, among others. She has curated several shows in Mexico, Argentina, Netherlands, Austria, and been editor of different books.
Since 2014 she is co-director of Hydra, a platform to generate projects related to the medium of photography, based on reflection, dialogue and collaboration between people, associations, institutions and publishers. Hydra has an educational program, a gallery, a bookstore and a publishing project called INFRAMUNDO: a collective project created in Mexico based on the intersection of experiences to produce photobooks, experimenting with different narrative tools, hybrid production and collaborative practices.
