PHOTOMATCH 2019 – PORTFOLIO REVIEWERS

DANIELA E GUIDO GIUDICI

Daniela and Guido Giudici have been presenting the work by Italian, Swiss and international photographers in their exhibition space Cons Arc in Chiasso, Italian Switzerland, since 1990. They organize lectures, book launches, conferences and workshop as well as exhibitions and they put together a very consistent library dedicated to photography, open to students and visitors. Cons Arc gallery with both public and private spaces promote numerous events dedicated to photography, such as the Biennale dell’Immagine, founded in 2007.

RENATA FERRI

Renata Ferri, journalist, is currently the director of photography at iO Donna, women’s weekly magazine of Il Corriere della Sera. Until 2018 she was also the chief picture editor of Amica, the monthly magazine of Rcs Mediagroup. From 1991 to 2005 she was the director of projects at Contrasto agency. From 2010 to 2015 she had a blog about photography on ilPost.it. She has been a member of many juries and photographic awards including the editions of World Press Photo (2011 and 2012). She teaches in specialized schools and university courses and follows several authors’ photographic projects on a regular basis.

GEORGE KING

George King is the Editor of Unseen Magazine and unseenplatform.com.
In this role, he writes, commissions and edits a range of stories exploring the position of photography in society today, as well as managing the editorial production of Unseen Magazine. King previously worked at Foam Magazine, collaborating closely with contemporary photographers on a range of printed publications. He received a BA in Liberal Arts & Sciences from University College Utrecht, with an emphasis on Art History, Museum Studies & Cultural Heritage.

MARCEL FORTINI

Marcel Fortini is the founder director of the Centre Méditerranéen de la Photographie in Bastia, Corse.
He graduated at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie d’Arles and he is Docteur en arts plastiques et sciences de l’art. Besides his main work, he works as a curator and pursues a personal photographic research, both as a critic and as photographer. Among his last works, L’esthétique des ruines dans la photographie de guerre published by L’Harmattan, Monumenti and Diciottu published by Trans Photographic Press.

PIERRE ANDRÉ PODBIELSKY

Pierre André Podbielski, founder of Podbielski Contemporary, defines himself as a citizen of the world.
He has Polish and German origins (his father was a Prussian who grew up in Berlin, his polish mother raised in Vienna) and he was born in Geneva with an Australian passport. He fluently speaks French, German and English. He is a qualified architect (Ecole des Beaux Arts of Paris) and a passionate collector. Podbielski becomes gallerist and active member of the Rubin Gallery from 2001 to 2009, directing his areas of competence towards abstract painting, towards photography and site-specific commissions. Together with the gallery he participates in numerous fairs (Art Cologne, Artefiera Bologna, Miart, Preview Berlin, Scope NYC and Miami) that allow him to establish a qualified contacts network between artists, galleries, curators and collectors. In order to consolidate this experience acquired and facing new challenges, in January 2011 he inaugurates Podbielski Contemporary in Berlin whose focus is photography only. In September 2018 he moved the gallery to Milan, where he promoted exhibition projects by emerging artists, consolidating its participation in Italian and international fairs (Artissima, MIA, Photo London, Unseen, Fotofever, Artefiera Bologna).

MINDAUGAS KAVALIAUSKAS

Mindaugas Kavaliauskas is the founder and director of KAUNAS PHOTO.
After studying at Kaunas Photography School (1989-1992), obtaining Bachelor and Masters degrees in Art History at Vytautas Magnus University (1992-1996, 1996-2000), residential studies at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie (Arles, 1997-1998), Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (Paris, 1998), University of Lausanne (Switzerland, 2000-2001) and working as an intern at the Musée de l’Elysée (Lausanne, 2001), in 2004 he founded KAUNAS PHOTO festival, that he has been directing ever since. KAUNAS PHOTO is the longest-running art photography festival in the Baltic states. It focuses on works of emerging photographers and great underexposed photography from all over the world.
Kavaliauskas is a photographer, curator, consultant, publisher of photography. He has been teaching photography in different universities, schools and consulting artists. He has curated a number of exhibitions in photographic festivals, galleries, museums in Europe and Asia – Pacific region: FotoGrafia (Rome), Fotohonap (Budapest), Photaumnales (Beauvais, France), Photodemer (Vannes, France), Backlight (Tampere, Finland), Pingyao and Lishui festivals (China), Auckland festival of photography (New Zealand) etc. He reviews portfolios in festivals, such as Fotofest (Houston), Photo Espana (Madrid), Eyes-On (Vienna), Rencontres d’Arles (France) and also in KAUNAS PHOTO, with its own portfolio review competition KAUNAS PHOTO STAR and on-line portfolio review platform folioPORT.org.

ANNA SHPAKOVA

Anna Shpakova is an independent photo editor, cultural producer of documentary and book projects. She has worked as a director of photography for several leading magazines in Russia, as well as an exhibition curator both in Russia and abroad. Being a long time expert of Soviet photography, Shpakova has been involved in visual study of emergent photography in post-Soviet countries. She lives and works in Moscow.

NICCOLÒ FANO

Niccolò Fano (Rome,1985) is the founder and director of Matèria Gallery, based in the neighbourhood of San Lorenzo in Rome and opened to the public in 2015. The gallery proposes an exhibition programme that touches upon all aspects of Contemporary Art, with a particular focus on the role and use of the photographic medium. Fano holds a BA in Photography at the University for the Creative Arts, a Masters degree in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins and an awarded Creative Ventures MBA at London Business School. In the UK he has taught at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London and the UCA in Farnham.
He currently teaches as visiting lecturer at Officine Fotografiche Roma, the Rome University of Fine Arts and ISFCI.

FRED BOUCHER

Fred Boucher lives and works in the north of France, is founder of the PhotAumnales festival, artistic director of Usimages Biennial, director of the publishing house Diaphane editions and lecturer in photography at Jules Verne University in Amiens.
He studied photography in Arles and created in 1991 Diaphane, a center for photography, and in 2004 the PhotAumnales festival which presents exhibitions every year in Beauvais. The Diaphane photography center develops a policy of spreading photography in the Picardy region, through the organization of exhibitions, festivals, artistic residencies, the publication of photographic books and raising awareness among young people with a dedicated education program. Diaphane also develops partnerships with numerous festivals including, Rencontres Internationales de Gaspesie, Hongkong international photo festival and Kaunas Photo.

CAROLINE BENICHOU

For over 10 years, Caroline Benichou worked at Delpire Editeur as the editorial coordinator of books on Jules Etienne Marey, Michael Ackerman, William Klein, Robert Capa, etc. and around 50 titles in the “Photo Poche” collection, as well as overseeing the conception and production of many exhibitions. Then she worked as a freelance editor before joining Galerie VU’ as a gallerist in 2013. She has written prefaces of photography books (Mary Ellen Mark, Francesco Zizola, Marc Riboud, Eyes Wild Open, etc.) and still works as a curator for photography books.

NICOLAS LOZITO

Nicolas Lozito is a journalist and photo editor. He works for the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero, for which he is in charge of graphics and photography. He runs several columns such as “Quelli delle foto”, in which he interviews greatest photographers, “Colpo d’occhio”, about photography books, and the web space “Miniature”. He teaches Visual Storytelling at Scuola Holden in Turin. Previously he was photo editor at La Stampa, thanks to which he won a prize at the European Newspaper Award for his work on photo-stories. His main focus is on photojournalism and visual storytelling of reality. He rather prefers local stories and he can contribute offering feedbacks mostly on editing, narration and submissions to newspapers and magazines.

STEVEN V-L LEE

Steven V-L Lee is a Malaysian freelance photographer based in London, UK.
In 2009, Steven initiated the Kuala Lumpur International Photo Awards, an annual international portrait photography competition based in Malaysia, that focus on the best in contemporary portrait photography and has attracted the participation of some top international photographers.
Lee continues to run photography educational workshops through EXPOSURE+ Photo Mentoring platform in Kuala Lumpur with other photographers and has been a portfolio reviewer at several international festivals. He began his photographic career as a documentary and travel photographer in the late ’90s when began writing travel-related articles for magazines and journals. In 2000, he published his first coffee-table book titled Outside Looking In: Kuala Lumpur, which received the Asian Prize at PhotoCity Sagamihara Festival of the Image, Japan in 2007.
Part of the collection is held with the City of Sagamihara National Photographic Archives. His commercial portraiture and fashion work have graced the covers of License! Europe, Country Club UK and Masterpiece and Asiana magazines. Focussing on personal work, Lee has over the last 5 years been developing several projects and narratives founded through personal travel and thoughts about the wider effects of photography and re-discovery, beginning with MUSEO and then LUMINA. He’s currently working on his latest book ‘IDIOSYNCRASY 1’ and COMMONSCAPES.

XAVIER CANONNE

Xavier Canonne is an art historian graduated from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium) and a doctor of Art History and Archeology from the Sorbonne (Paris I) with a thesis on Surrealism in Belgium (1950-1993). Canonne managed his career in several field of activities between passion and professionalism: as an author, an artist, a publisher, an art history (cinema) professor, as a curator and director, among the other experiences:
From the 1987 to the 2002 he was the President for the advisory Commission of Plastic Arts of the French Community, in 2017 was the author of the book, and in 2018 curator of the exhibition René Magritte. The Revealing images. From the 2000 he is the Director of the Photography Museum of the French Community in Charleroi.

JUSTYNA KOCISZEWSKA

Justyna Kociszewska works at Fotofestiwal – International Festival of Photography in Łódź (Poland) since 2013, as a member of the program board, head of communication and film programming. She worked as manager of the Leica Gallery Warsaw, she collaborated with the Archeologia Fotografii Foundation, Center for Contemporary Art Ujazowski Castle, and she works with independent photographers such as Kacper Kowalski, Maksymilian Rigamonti and many others. Interested in cross-media projects and nature-related topics. Fotofestiwal in 2020 will focus on collections – therefore any collection-related projects or artistic practice are of her interest as well.

CAROL KÖRTING

Carol Körting was born in Bogotá, Colombia. She moved to Germany and after working as a freelance photographer, she studied photo editing at the Ostkreuz Schule für Fotografie in Berlin. She has collaborated as a photo editor at Der Freitag and Zeit-Magazin in Berlin. Currently she works as photo editor and scout photographer for the LFI Magazine, the independent magazine which features the best Leica photographers. She has been invited as a curator, to the 20 photographers convention in Veracruz, Mexico in collaboration with the Cuatro Caminos Photography Museum. Körting has also given talks and presentations about self-promotion tools at the VII Masterclass in Berlin and in Bilbao at the Basquedokfestival and moderated an interview with Charlotte Schmitz at the F3-freiraum für fotografie in Berlin. As a portfolio reviewer she is mostly interested in looking at documentary projects on contemporary issues.