Photo: FFO/FFF, 2023
Photo: Bust of Pierre-André Borioli “Nono”, bees wax and
brick, Apian (Aladin Borioli, Pierre-André Borioli and Françoise
Borioli), 2015.
APIAN
Apian is a Ministry of Bees responsible for the relationship between humans and bees. Mixing methods from anthropology and philosophy with the practice of art and beekeeping, Apian explores the age-old interspecies relationship humans have developed with bees. Via polymorphous ethnographies combining photography, videos, sounds, and writing, it offers a refuge to encounter bees on a more egalitarian basis. Ultimately, Apian is a site for meeting around shared sensibilities with scholars, artists, and beekeepers to think of post-capitalist beekeeping practices and socially engaged relationships with the Earth.
Apian has exhibited at and been supported by various arts and academic institutions such as Eyebeam, Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg (HWK), La Becque, Pro Helvetia, ICA (London), the BBC, NTS Radio, the Photographers’ Gallery, AnthroVision (journal of visual anthropology), unthinking.photography (journal of photography), Centre d’Art Neuchâtel (CAN), CTM Festival, Images Vevey, CAIRN Centre d’Art, Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI), among others. In 2020, Apian published Hives 2400 B.C.E. – 1852 C.E. (RVB/Images Vevey, 2020 [2022]) – a visual atlas of the beehive.
Photo: The Polish Underground Independence Army
(PPAN), May 1949
The moment of elevation of the host during a field
mass celebrated for the “Gendarmerie” of the
Polish Underground Independence Army (PPAN)
by Rev. Władysław “Sem” Gurgacz (centre,
background). All the participants in the liturgy
(except the celebrant) kneel down. Marian “Zoro”
Stanek faces the camera (second on the left).
Stanisław “Emir” Pióro kneels, first on the right.
Handwritten pen marks from 1 to 6 made on some
of the people in the picture.
Author: Tadeusz Ryba
Reference: IPNKr-3-3-6-4
Beata Bartecka, Łukasz Rusznica
“How to Look Natural in Photos” is a book about a totalitarian system that uses photography for its purposes. It includes reflections on the mechanism and relationships connected with looking and photographing, observing and being observed. Violence begins in the nervous system, from an impulse that runs through the body and makes someone press the shutter. It ends in an archive, the place where information and images are stored. This basis reveals who interprets the collected data, and consequently – who controls the facts. The book also tells a story of spies, agents, guards, AI algorithm programmers, surveillance subjects, suspects, archivists, convicts and accidentally photographed passers-by. They interact on various levels, all comprising one huge machine, inordinate and dispersed.
Beata Bartecka is a curator of visual arts and design exhibitions, focusing mainly on photography, illustration, graphics, graphic design and typography. Journalist, editor and author of publications related to culture, art and design. Screenwriter who, together with director Monika Kotecka, has been working on the documentary Hidden since 2018. Together with Łukasz Rusznica, they created the book How to Look Natural in Photos (2021, OPT & Palm* Studios), which was awarded by the City of Wrocław as part of the Wrocław Artistic Award (2021) and the main prize in the Photographic Publication of the Year competition. Scholarship holder of the Polish Film Institute and the Minister of Culture and National Heritage.
Łukasz Rusznica is a graduate of cultural studies at the University of Wrocław. He is the winner of the Photographic Publication of the Year 2019 - the winner of the Krzysiek Makowski - for the photo book Subterranean River, winner of the Warto Award (2015) and the Griffin Art Space Prize - Lubicz 2017. The book How to Look Natural in Photos (co-author Beata Bartecka) was shortlisted for The Rencontres d'Arles Book Awards in 2021. In 2020, he received a scholarship from the Minister of Culture and National Heritage and a scholarship from the President of Wrocław.
His works have been shown in galleries and institutions such as Krakow Photomonth, BWA Wrocław, TIFF Festival , Raster Gallery , Wrocław Contemporary Museum , Pan Tadeusz Museum , Łódź Art Museum , Haus am Lützowplatz in Berlin, Maison de la Photographie in Lille.
Photo: Nina Strand. from Current Condition, Journal, 2023
NINA STRAND
For Index, this year's edition of Fotobokfestival Oslo, Nina Strand will exhibit three of her books, published with Journal, all dealing with different historical contexts. Strand sees the book as her gallery, and use photobooks, magazines and fanzines as her primary exhibition spaces. In all her publications she use a combination of images and text. So, how do you think you're doing? (2008) contains a series of photo novellas dealing with the self-development trend so present in the early 2000s. The personal picture memoir Dr Strand (2015) combines text and images to tell the story of her mother, the late Norwegian doctor, feminist and activist Kitty Strand. And her latest book, Current Condition (2023) is a photo novel in four chapters that zooms in on her generation and our approach to adulthood.
Nina Strand is a photographer, writer and founder of Objektiv Press. Strand holds a BA in project management, an MA in Creative Writing, as well as a work grant from the Art Council in Norway. She works with image and text and has published several photobooks and zines, most recently, the photo-novel Current Condition (Journal, 2023.) She's a regular contributor with essays on photography to Objektiv and other publications. This year, she co-curated the exhibition Søsterskap for Les Rencontres d'Arles and published the accompanying Objektiv book.
Photo: Saturn V rocket SA-506 launches from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, marking the start of the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission, 1969.
LEWIS BUSH
Depravity’s Rainbow.
A dark history of space exploration
Wernher von Braun was a man with star dust in his eyes, but blood on his hands.
Today he is remembered as the designer of the Saturn V rockets which carried men to the moon in 1969. But before this, he designed weapons for the military of Nazi Germany, including the V-2, the first large ballistic missile.
This was an indiscriminate terror weapon, which killed thousands of civilians in cities across Europe, and which thousands of slave labourers died to produce in the hellish conditions of an underground factory in central Germany.
Depravity’s Rainbow asks; how was it possible for a man who had connections to the highest levels of the Nazi leadership, and designed weapons intended to safeguard and perpetuate Nazi rule, to end up at NASA in the United States, building rockets for the peaceful scientific exploration of space?
Lewis Bush is a photographer, writer, and researcher. His work looks for ways to visualise powerful agents, technologies, and practices, which typically go unrepresented in documentary photography. To do this he employs a range of research strategies, from in- depth interviewing to open-source investigation, and works across media and platforms, using photography, text, video, data visualisation, exhibitions, books, films, and apps. His projects have been nominated and shortlisted for prizes including the C/O Berlin Talent Award 2021, The FOAM Paul Huff Award 2021, the Kassel Book Dummy Award 2019.