Meet with FiL Mentors
STUART SMITH / GOST BOOKS
Visual Arts, photography
Publisher, Designer
Founded in 2013, GOST Books is an independent visual arts and photography publisher based in London. We pride ourselves on an uncategorisable output of diverse subject matter and design. Working from the initial edit and sequencing of images to overseeing the books on press, GOST not only provides a platform for the work of emerging artists but contributes to print legacies of masters in the medium.
Stuart Smith is the director and co-founder of GOST Books. Designing since the late 80s, he established SMITH in 1994 and has become renowned for his specialisation in typography and award-winning photo books.
LUKAS BIRK / FRAGLICH PUBLISHING
Photographer, Book Maker, Publisher
Lukas is a photographer. A storyteller. A conservator. And publisher. His multi-disciplinary projects have been turned into films, chronicles and books and exhibited on four continents. A large part of Lukas’ work deals with archival material he collects while traveling or while delving into his own background. These archives are not ambiguous nor are they found images. Lukas researches his imagery through investigations and explorations very often in areas that have been affected by conflict and have not yet had the chance to present existing material in an artistic form. His narratives tackle recorded history by creating alternate storylines and fictional elements, alongside commonly accepted facts. Lukas co-founded the Afghan Box Camera Project and most recently the Myanmar Photo Archive, an endeavor to re-interpret and tell the story of Myanmar through collected photographs taken over the last 6 decades.. Fraglich Publishing, his own book imprint publishes projects by Lukas and selected work mainly focused around photographic history.
www.boxcameranow.com
MARINA MEYER
Designer, Visual Editor
Marina is a concept designer of sequences. She translates ideas and projects from authors into different formats to enhance and expand them. With intuition she connects the knowledge acquired: from the architecture the space; from the design the storytelling; from video editing the rhythm, the movement and the sequence; and from the user the interaction. She graduated in graphic design in 2014. She also studied engraving and printing which she combined with architecture studies. During the last years she has worked as an interface and user experience designer combined with photo-book design. In her opinion, a design is not without a user and his/her emotion.
It is in that field that she researches, experiments and learns.
SİNEM DİŞLİ
Photographer, Artist
“To me the real potential of photography resides in its limitations. In my work, I deal with the materiality of nature, and its relation to cultural practices through images. I very much value the idea of coming together with other image makers who would like to engage in critical dialogue as a way of expanding together.”
Sinem Dişli was born in 1982 in Urfa, Turkey. She earned her B.F.A. degree in “Sculpture” at Dokuz Eylul University, Izmir and her M.F.A degree in “Photography” at Marmara University, Istanbul. Between 2005 and 2008, she worked as an assistant curator at the photography department of Istanbul Museum of Modern Art. In 2008, she was awarded a scholarship to attend School of Visual Arts in New York, and also participated in visual arts programs at ICP and The Cooper Union. She was invited for residencies at Triangle Arts Association and ISCP in 2015 and Marble House Project in 2020. In addition to six solo exhibitions the artist had so far, her work was also shown internationally in numerous group exhibitions such as “A Pillar of Smoke” (The Rencontres d’Arles, 2018), “You Are What You Eat” (Krakow Photo Month, 2019). She was featured as one of the “7 Promising Photographers to Watch at At Arles Festival” by The New York Times in 2018, and was nominated for The Prix Pictet Award in 2019.
DENİZ GÜNGÖREN
Composer, Musician
He a musician working primarily as a composer along with being an arranger, songwriter and singer. He has composed music for film, documentaries, commercials, stage and the concert hall, including several feature films.
He will be happy to be of assistance through any musical needs you may have for your media; be it just some questions about what may be appropriate for your project or a commission of original music.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1795782/
ANI EKİN ÖZDEMİR
Designer, Illustrator, Photographer
She graduated from Koç University Media and Visual Arts department in 2019. She attended various international workshops on photography and publishing as well as artist residencies. Recently she started her master education at Zürcher Hochschule der Künste (ZHdK) MA Transdisciplinary Studies. The programme links various disciplines in the arts and design, the sciences and everyday life. She can help with the design (such as the cover design, the layout, typography and sequencing) of your photobook, art book or any book that you are working on currently. Also, she can help you to improve your PDF or printed portfolio.
SABRINA MANDANICI
Art critic and writer
Sabrina is an art critic and writer, dividing her time between Europe and the US. She holds an MA in art history and comparative literature from the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, and an MFA in Art Criticism and Writing from the School of Visual Arts, New York. Her fellowships include the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Fulbright Foundation, and the Krupp Foundation, where she participated in the Museum Curators for Photography program. Before beginning to write full-time, she worked at the Sprengel Museum Hannover, the Museum Folkwang Essen, and The Walther Collection, among others. She writes about photobooks for Collector Daily, and has contributed to Aperture, Artforum, and Camera Austria, among other publications. She also writes catalogue and personal essays.
The projects she gravitates towards explore, question, embrace, or play with the relationship between text and image. This can entail a fore- or afterword, an essay, fiction or non-fiction, poetry, as well as experimental text-forms.
She can contribute to your project by: Editing and work-shopping texts/images; assist with research/sequencing; help to define/deepen the overall concept of visual storytelling.
CEMRE YEŞİL GÖNENLİ / FiLBooks
Photographer, Visual Story Teller, Book Maker, Publisher, Artist
Her work has been exhibited and published internationally including The Guardian, Colors Magazine, International Centre of Photography New York, British Journal of Photography, La Fabrica, Istanbul Modern Museum, Salt Beyoğlu. She was nominated for the Paul Huf Award 2014 of Amsterdam Photography Museum FOAM, for ING Unseen Talent Award 2016 and for Lead Awards 2016. Her books were shortlisted in Arles Author Book Award, Prix Levallois and Photo London Book Dummy Award.
Currently she lectures on photography in Falmouth University MA Photography and Istanbul Bilgi University BA Visual Communication Design. She also works as a writer and curator. She is the founder of FiLBooks, in Karaköy, Istanbul.
GARY MCLEOD
Photographer, Researcher, Writer
Originally from the UK, Gary is based in Tokyo where he teaches photomedia. Coming to Japan is a long story but it included commercial product photography (stressful), teaching English (good experience) and exhibiting in galleries (expensive). In 2006, he was awarded a scholarship from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in the UK for self-directed research into photographs of Japan made during the Challenger expedition (1872–1876). In 2016, he completed a PhD at London College of Communication for research into rephotography. In 2019, he was awarded funding from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for a rephotographic exploration of photomedia and temporality in coastal cities affected by the 2011 tsunami. He has taught photography and visual communication in the UK, India, Tukey and Japan and has given numerous workshops and lectures in other countries. Specializing in photographic methodologies and strategies, Gary is very good at (A) challenging your photography, and (B) helping you to understand why you do it. His work can also be found in the collection of the Natural History Museum in London.
ANA CASAS BRODA
Photographer, Artist, Founder of Hydra
Lives in Mexico since 1974. Studied Visual Arts, photography and history in Spain, Austria, New York and Mexico. Her work focuses on the exploration of identity, memory and its link with the photographic medium. She has exhibited in different countries individually and collectively. She has published two photobooks in Spain: Álbum, (Mestizo, 2000), and Kinderwunsch, (La Fábrica, 2014. Kinderwunsch was nominated for the Deutsche Börse Prize in 2015. Since 1990 she organizes study programs, seminars, workshops, festivals, lectures about the photography medium. In 2012 she founds Hydra + Photography with Gabriela González Reyes and Gerardo Montiel Klint, a platform to generate projects related to the medium of photography, including curatorships, photobooks, exhibitions, gallery, organization of events and an educational program, that includes many different activities. Since 2016 she organizes INCUBADORA DE FOTOLIBROS, a long-term educational program that provides authors with the tools to develop their books with international editors, designers and curators. In 2018 she founds 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. INFRAMUNDO is a project of HYDRA, by Ana Casas Broda and Ramon Pez. Since 2018 INFRAMUNDO has published 28 photobooks mostly by Latin American authors.
EGE KANAR
Artist, Photographer
“Involuntary memory, vernacular images, acousmatic sound, haunted archives, obscure literature and the inner workings of the universe are some of the things we can meet and discuss to figure out strategies in building a coherent body of work together.”
Ege Kanar studied “Visual Arts and Communication Design” at Sabancı University in Istanbul, and completed an M.A. degree on “Photography” at The Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) in
Prague. Kanar’s work explores lens-based media from an ontological standpoint dealing with topics such as materiality, indexicality, representation, and memory to ponder on intrinsic ways photographic images construct meaning. The artist lately deals with conventions of seeing
embedded in institutional archives and tries to develop artistic means of tackling this material against its grain. Kanar makes use of still images, text, video, sound and installation to create layered narratives. Other than his two recent solo shows, “Apparatus” (Versus Art Project, 2019)
and Hammer for Scale (poşe, 2018), his work has been shown in many group shows both within and outside of Turkey. He lives in Istanbul and currently teaches at Bahcesehir University Photography and Video Department.
NORA JACCAUD
Documentary Filmmaker, Interviewer, Editor
Nora Jaccaud has interviewed, filmed and edited hundreds of short video portraits internationally with a wide range of subjects. Her hunger for stories and her listening capacity led her to create Human Postcards, an ongoing series of 60 second video portraits, capturing the inspirational and often powerful messages of everyday people from around the world.
Prior to documentary, she worked as a curator and art director in contemporary art and cinema in France, French West Africa, China, and the USA. She co-directed a short film selected at Cinéfondation in Cannes in 2013 and has worked with such luminary filmmakers as Guy Maddin and Eugene Jarecki. Her multi-cultural upbringing and skills (speaks five languages) make her a natural connector among people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives.
Nora channels her experiences into a narrative format that is concise, structured and yet profoundly human. A skill she is eager to pass on.
http://www.humanpostcards.com/