Weekend with Unseen
May 25 – May 27
PHOTOBOOKFEST 2018

Moscow international festival PHOTOBOOKFEST 2018 and Unseen, the leading international platform for contemporary photography founded in the Netherlands, present the program Weekend with Unseen, which will be held from the 25th to the 27th of May at The Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography in Moscow.
Exclusively focusing on what is new in the photography world, Unseen provides a channel for up-and-coming talent to showcase their work. Unseen brings together the international photography community to discuss and debate the directions in which the photographic medium evolves. Unseen is an all-year-round platform conducting events throughout the year. Its main event–Unseen Amsterdam, which consists of a fair, a book market, a speakers programme and much more–returns for the seventh time from the 21st to the 23rd of September 2018.

Unseen, together with PHOTOBOOKFEST, is hosting a three-day program, where you will be able to learn about the latest trends in the photography industry and get an inspiration for your own future projects. There is an extensive program of events filled with exhibitions, lectures and debates on the state of photography today.

Weekend with Unseen begins on Friday, May 25. The program is being opened by Emilia van Lynden, Artistic Director of Unseen, who will present the educational program of the weekend. After the introductory words, the Head of the Unseen Book Market & Dummy Award Daria Tuminas will present the short-list of the 2017 Unseen Dummy Award and give a lecture on contemporary photo-book practices. Tuminas will also be a member of the international jury team in the Photobookfest Dummy Contest 2018. On May 26, Laurence Aëgerter and Sjoerd Knibbeler, two artists working with photography in the Netherlands, will hold artist-talks and take part in an in-depth discussion program, together with gallery owner and UNIT c.m.a. founder Narda van ’t Veer, as well as several Russian speakers. The program ends on May 27 with a portfolio review session for photographers by an international team of photography experts (among them: Emilia van Lynden, Daria Tuminas, Narda van ’t Veer, Laurence Aëgerter, Sjoerd Knibbeler, Nadezhda Sheremetova, Igor Mukhin, Alexey Korsi). The winner of Unseen Dummy Award 2017, Małgorzata Stankiewicz, is going to conclude the program with an artist-talk and to present her new book “Cry of an Echo”.
The program is supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Russia and is co-curated by Unseen.

WEEKEND WITH UNSEEN DETAILED PROGRAM:

May 25, Friday: PHOTOBOOKS (RUS)
19:00 – 19:30 Welcome and introduction by Emilia van Lynden
19:30–21:00 – Daria Tuminas, Head of the Unseen Book Market and Unseen Dummy Award will give an interacrive lecture “Dummy experiment” and present the latest shortlist of Unseen Dummy Award and show. The visitors will be invited to take part in an experiment that will involve working out criteria for judging dummies as well as exploring the group dynamics of the selection process
More about the exhibition: photobookfest.com/eng/2018/exhibitions/unseen-dummy-award


May, 26 Saturday: CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY / EDUCATION

12:00–13:30 Panel discussion #1
THE FUTURE OF CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY – WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
During its relatively short history, photography has already caused a revolutionary shift away from the accustomed view of paintings and drawings and has introduced an entirely new way of representing reality. As photography finally established its status as an artistic medium, how did its position change? How should artists create their work in the world where imagery is continuously bombarding our visual perception? What are the latest developments in the medium within contemporary art? Through a panel discussion, photography professionals are going to delve into the current themes and trends within the medium, highlighting the different processes and formats that are being employed by contemporary practitioners.
Participants:
Narda van’t Veer, galerist
Vladimir Dudchenko, collector
Nadezhda Sheremetova, curator
Laurence Aëgerter, artist
Moderated by: Emilia van Lynden

Artist-talks:
14:30–15:30 Sjoerd Knibbeler (60 minutes including Q&A)
16:00–17:00 Laurence Aëgerter (60 minutes including Q&A)

17:30–19:00 Panel discussion #2
THE PROFESSIONALS TOOLBOX
HOW TO KICK START A CAREER IN CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY
After studying for years to become an artist, the daunting moment finally arrives and it’s time to leave the guidance and comfort offered by an art academy. Without the safety net of classes or mentors for advice, the most recently graduated artists are left with an all-encompassing question: what happens now? From networking to self-promotion or finding gallery representation, it seems like an unachievable task to get the ball rolling on your career. Photography professionals, ranging from educators to gallerists, are going to discuss the different elements and strategies that any graduate should bear in mind when they start to profile themselves as an artist within the contemporary art world.
Participants:
Narda van ’t Veer, gallerist
Sjoerd Knibbeler, artist
Alyona Kurmashova, galerist
Alexey Korsi, artist, curator, lecturer
Moderated by: Emilia van Lynden

May 27, Sunday, PROFESSIONAL EXCHANGE

12:00–16:00 PORTFOLIO REVIEW (EN/RUS)
Portfolio reviews for the local artist by an international team of reviewers
Reviewers: Emilia van Lynden (Artistic Director, Unseen), Narda van ’t Veer (Unit/The Ravestijn Gallery), Sjoerd Knibbeler (artist), Laurence Aërgerter (artist), Daria Tuminas (Head of Unseen Book Market, Igor Mukhin (artist), Nadezhda Sheremetova (curator, FotoDepartament), Alexey Korsi (curator, Stella Art Foundation).
9 artists per reviewer. 20 minutes review per artist.
Local artists can apply to participate within the portfolio reviews and showcase their portfolios to the professionals whilst getting feedback on their work, their techniques and possibilities for them abroad.
More about portfolio review photobookfest.com/portfolio-review

18:00–20:00 Małgorzata Stankiewicz.
Artist-talk and presentation of the “Cry of an Echo” exhibition and book. Stankiewicz is the winner of Unseen Dummy Award 2017.
Małgorzata Stankiewicz is an artist born in Poland and based in Switzerland. She works with black-and-white hand-printed and experimental photography.
In 2017, she became the winner of Unseen Dummy Award with her photobook “Cry of an Echo”. The book is dedicated to the Białowieža Forest, Europe's last primeval forest, which is being destroyed despite all that was said about the environment in recent years. 46 large black-and-white photographs included in the book are called by the photographer herself ‘a metaphor for torment’, ‘a silent shout’, and ‘a protest’.
More about the exhibition photobookfest.com/eng/2018/exhibitions/cry-of-an-echo



More about the participants:

Emilia van Lynden (NL/UK) is the Editor-in-Chief of Unseen Magazine and Artistic Director of Unseen, the leading platform for contemporary photography in the Netherlands. Van Lynden, among other things, sources artistic talents, as well as galleries, collectives and projects that have a large program committed to supporting emerging artists.

Daria Tuminas (RU) is an independent researcher, curator and photographer, born in St. Petersburg, based in Amsterdam. Daria worked at Johan Deumen’s Gallery (Amsterdam) from 2014 until 2017 and is currently the Head of Unseen Book Market and Dummy Award at Unseen Amsterdam.

Narda van ’t Veer (NL) is a gallerist and the founder of Unit c.m.a, an Amsterdam-based agency representing artists in photography, illustration, animation, art-direction and cinema. In 1977, her love for photography was born when she came into contact with the work of Guy Bourdin. A few years later she received her degree in marketing and economics and decided to start an advertising agency specialized in fashion accounts. Through her work as an art director, she came into contact with various photographers and, in 1988, she decided to start her own agency–Unit c.m.a. Nowadays, she represents national and international creatives from promising talents, such as Carlijn Jacobs and Gilleam Trapenberg, to the big names like Carli Hermès.
After being in the photography business for over 30 years, van T’Veer has come across a lot of art photography and photobooks. It was therefore inevitable that she started her own collection, featuring works by Helmut Newton and Collier Schorr amongst others. In 2012, van T’Veer founded her own gallery in collaboration with Jasper Bode. Via The Ravestijn Gallery she represents photographers like Philippe Braquenier, Mona Kuhn and Robin de Puy. In 2017, she joined the advisory board of World Press Photo.

Sjoerd Knibbeler (NL) is a visual artist from the Netherlands, living and working in Amsterdam. Through an associative, process-driven approach to photography, he explores the scientific quest to discover the world and deploys strategies like observation, experimentation and model-making in his artistic process. His work focuses on visualizing invisible natural phenomena, such as the wind, air movement and climatological conditions. Knibbeler creates a world that follows his own logic, and where associative relationships and imagination play a vital part. The camera–in one form or another–is always present as a tool in his process materializing in printed matter, objects, video installations and artist books.
In 2015, he was selected as a FOAM Talent and was awarded the Grand Prix du Jury Photographie in Hyères, France. Since then, he has had solo exhibitions at FOAM Photography Museum, Espace Images, Contact Festival and Villa Noailles. Notable group exhibitions include Quickscan NL#02 at the Nederlands Fotomuseum and the Paris Photo / Aperture Foundation Photobook Awards, which included his shortlisted artist book “Paper Planes”.

Laurence Aëgerter (FR/NL) is a multi-disciplinary French artist who lives and works in Amsterdam and Marseille. In her work, Laurence Aëgerter investigates how to give a new meaning to existing images by using both historical and contemporary sources from our society's shared ‘memory bank’. Through her interactions with the material, she intervenes into the identity of her subjects. Her interventions challenge traditional reading of a range of sources, such as encyclopedias, documentary photographs and art reproductions. As a result, the existing images regain urgency as they come alive in a new context. Although Aëgerter uses various media and materials, photography prevails, while public installations and artist books are also a part of her artistic vocabulary.
Recent solo exhibitions include Le Louvre, MAMAC Nice; The Modernists and More, as well as the Hermitage Museum Amsterdam. Latest group exhibitions include Les rencontres de la photographie, Arles; Making Africa, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao; Quickscan #2, Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam. In 2016, Aëgerter was awarded the International Photography Nestlé Price, Festival Images, Vevey (CH).