River Claure:

The expression chi’xi, an undefined colour close to grey that Aymara women create by weaving two juxtaposed layers, serves as a symbolic reference within this work that the mixed, diverse society of Bolivia presents, using an imaginary of the fantastic.

For years, the photographic representation of Bolivia, like that of the global south, has been limited to reductionist, folklorising Western narratives. The simplified, homogenized image of Bolivian culture and identity has focused on certain ethnic components, influencing the imaginary that its citizens project when they think of themselves. The visual canons that were established through the foreign photographic gaze, deployed during the rise of the industrial revolution, capitalism and colonialism, have long marked the way in which Bolivians imagine their own country, their identity and their territory.

The Warawar Wawa project, Son of the Stars in the Aymara language, proposes an alternative Bolivian identity that, without denying the western footprint, is conscious of its roots. Recontextualizing the novel The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, in the contemporary Andean culture, I place this story in the “extraterrestrial” landscapes of the Andes, where the protagonist child wears an FC Barcelona jersey.

River Claure is a Bolivian photographer and visual artist known for his meticulously constructed portraits and magical landscapes. In his work he questions both dominant notions of cultural identity and the importance of photographic images to our sense of reality. His family comes from a community in the Andes called Calacota, where he grew up in the city experiencing the tensions between his indigenous roots and the urban reality in Bolivia in the 2000s. Claure studied performing arts, graphic design and contemporary photography. 

Claure has been recognized with the Eduardo Abaroa National Prize (Bolivia) and the XVIII Roberto Villagraz International Photography Scholarship (Spain). In 2020, he won the Genesis Imaging Award given by Format 21 Festival (UK) and was nominated for the Joop Swart Master Class of World Press Photo (Netherlands). In 2021, he was awarded the PhotoVogue Scholarship (Italy) for his project “Warawar Wawa”, and was nominated for the photography scholarship of the MAST foundation (Italy). His work has been exhibited in countries such as Bolivia, China, Chile, Spain, the United States, France, Italy, Peru, and the United Kingdom. He has been named one of the photographers “Ones to Watch” by the British Journal of Photography and is represented by Vigil Gonzales (Peru) and Camara Oscura (Spain) galleries. 

riverclaure.net

@riverclaure

Jason DeMarte: 

My work examines a contemporary consumer existence through sublime tableaus of apathy. I’m interested in creating visually seductive landscapes with narratives of post-capitalist tensions. Through hypothetical dystopias, a rearranging of the natural order emerges from the ashes of our inconspicuous consumption, where nature, much like our commercial environments, has been impregnated with the detritus of marketing, consumption, and waste. Landscapes pop with carefully designed visual gluttony that attempts to compete with our limitless capacity to consume. Animals appear perfectly apathetic in overly adorned false environments, surrendering to the inevitability of what’s to come.

I work photographically to tap into the medium's ability to reflect truth, and much like commercial photography, I see the work as a nonsensical sales pitch, a seduction of false promise, where nature has succumbed to relentless marketing. Using the same methods as commercial photographers, I elevate seemingly ordinary, dull flora and fauna to the commercial stage, where we understand and treat nature like the material world we surround ourselves with. In an age where truth is irrelevant, hyperfocus, artificial lighting, and scale are used to exaggerate facts. My process ultimately aims to embrace a manipulation of truth by hyper-exaggerating the ordinary to mirror the sublime apathy of our modern existence.

My practice draws from a long history of constructed narratives in photography, artists like Oscar Gustave Rejlander and Julia Margret Cameron, were early pioneers in manipulating truth with the medium, while later artists like Gregory Crewdson, Jeff Wall, and Anthony Goicolea made the ordinary surreal with their highly choreographed stills. My process aims to simultaneously embrace a manipulation of truth by hyper-exaggerating the ordinary and to work within a kind of truth by utilizing the inherent believability of the photographic medium. 

Like the early tableau photographers, I draw inspiration from painting, specifically naturalist painting from movements like the Hudson River School. I’m interested in rekindling the romantic notions of nature while simultaneously subverting those romantic notions by juxtaposing pop consumption and visual gluttony.

Jason DeMarte is an artist best known for his large-scale, highly detailed, seductive flora and fauna photo assemblages that explore our cultural relationship to the natural world. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide and is held in many private and public collections including the Denver Art Museum, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Museum of Outdoor Arts, the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, Saks 5th Avenue Stores, and 21c Museum Hotels. His record of exhibitions includes solo shows at Denver Botanical Gardens, Rule Gallery in Marfa Texas, Ibis Contemporary in New Orleans, the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, the Detroit Center of Contemporary Photography, and Wessell Synman in Cape Town South Africa. DeMarte's work has also been included in prominent group exhibitions, such as; “Context” at Filter Photo Space in Chicago, “The National: Best Contemporary Photography” at the Ft. Wayne Museum of Art, and “Exposure 2021” at the Contemporary Calgary Art Museum “212 Photography Istanbul”, Museum Gazhane, Istanbul, Turkey. Jason is a tenured professor of art at Eastern Michigan University. He received his B.F.A. in Photography from Colorado State University and his M.F.A in Photography from the University of Oregon.

jasondemarte.com

@jasondemarte

Adam Ekberg: 

“In calculated performances that intersect with photography’s documentary potential, I explore ephemeral occurrences. Making such humble events happen is alchemy of sorts, the transformation of the mundane into the poignant. Within the constructed images, I reposition specific celebratory iconography to create minor spectacles. My process requires detailed and elaborate production outside the photographic frame so that what appears within the frame implies simplicity and straightforwardness. It is important to me that these constructions actually exist in the world, if only for the moment in which the photograph is made.”

Adam Ekberg earned his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recent solo exhibitions include George Eastman Museum, Rochester, and CLAMP, New York. Recent group exhibitions include Aperture, New York, Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME, and Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA.

Ekberg has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, Hewnoaks, Monson Arts, Monhegan Artists' Residency and Playa. He is the recipient of both the Society for Photographic Education’s Imagemaker Award and the Tanne Foundation Award.

His work is in the collections of the George Eastman Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Worcester Art Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among others.

When not making art, Ekberg can be found on long-distance solo bicycle trips, swimming in any body of water that will have him, teaching photography, and playing Go.

adamekberg.com

Julianna Foster:

My work explores how memory, time, and representation shape our perception and understanding of the natural world—how landscapes carry histories and continually change, both through natural forces and human influence. In my ongoing project, Geographical Lore, I photograph geological sites across the U.S.—including desert formations, mountainous terrain, and shifting coastlines. These places are shaped by environmental processes, such as erosion, drought, and ecosystem instability; however, human-driven changes, including land use, resource extraction, and climate disruption, also impact them.

I’m interested in how these landscapes become records—not only of geological time, but of cultural and personal memory. By blending photographs of actual sites with constructed scenes made in my studio, I explore the tension between what is real and what is imagined. These studio interventions allow me to reinterpret what I saw and felt in the field, creating a layered view that moves between observation and invention.

Through processes such as cutting, layering, folding, and rephotographing, I transform these materials to show the fragile and impermanent nature of the earth. These physical gestures mirror the natural forces that shape the land—fragmentation, pressure, compression—and suggest how time leaves its mark.

Julianna Foster earned an BFA in Design from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (2001) and an MFA in Book Arts + Printmaking from the University of the Arts (2006). Foster has exhibited work nationally and internationally, in private collections across the country, and her photographs, essays, and interviews are included in many publications. The award-winning project, Geographical Lore, is a selection of photographic works considering how the natural world can be represented. Combining photographic images of the natural world and hand-made, assembled environments, a blend of the fabricated and the “real” image play with ideas of memory and representation. She has collaborated with various artists on projects, including creating artist multiples, artist books, and a series of photographs and videos as well as self-published two photo/text books, lone hunter (2018) and to lean on the bend (2022). Foster was an associate professor in the School of Art, Photography Program and BFA in Art at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia until the university's closure in June 2024.

juliannafoster.com

@jules_foster

Thomas Jackson:

I repurpose manufactured materials to create and photograph site-responsive installations in unbuilt landscapes. Mimicking natural phenomena like bird murmurations, insect swarms, super blooms and wildfires, the installations are studies in contradiction: they adapt to their surroundings, appearing almost as though they belong, yet they’re made from unsustainable materials that exist in stark opposition to nature. In this state of simultaneous harmony and conflict, the installations mirror our own uneasy relationship with the environment, and our increasingly urgent struggle to find balance within it.

The photographs themselves strain credulity by design. At first blush they can appear to be digital fabrications, but in truth, they are entirely in-camera, printed with minimal post- production. At a moment when AI-generated imagery is rapidly reshaping visual culture—and making the line between the real and the fabricated ever blurrier—these works offer a quiet counterpoint. They are both meditations on illusion and assertions of the tangible. Jackson’s installations ask viewers to question their eyes, but also to appreciate the labor and unpredictability behind each image. They’re a reminder that reality can still surprise us.

Thomas Jackson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and grew up in Providence, Rhode Island. After earning a B.A. in History from the College of Wooster, he spent his early career in New York working first in book publishing, then as an editor and writer at Forbes Life magazine. An interest in photography books eventually led him to pick up a camera, shooting Garry Winogrand-inspired street scenes, then landscapes, and finally the installation work he does today. Largely self-taught as an artist, Jackson’s practice merges landscape photography, sculpture and installation art. His work has been exhibited widely, including at The Brooks Museum in Memphis, Tennessee and the Bolinas Museum in Bolinas, CA, and has been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Wired, the San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere. Jackson was named one of the Critical Mass Top 50 in 2012, won the “installation/still-life” category of PDN’s The Curator award in 2013 and earned second place in CENTER's Curator's Choice Award in 2014.

thomasjacksonphotography.com 

@thomasjackson415

Xuan-Hui Ng

I began photography as self-therapy. My mum’s death plunged me into despair until a chance encounter with nature started the healing process. Its majesty gave me perspective and reignited a sense of wonder. Initially, I photographed to prolong the serenity that nature brought. Now, I photograph to celebrate my serendipitous encounters with it. 

In Hokkaido, Japan, winter is brutal but the cold gives rise to diamond dust, sun-pillars and iridescent clouds. These magical phenomena, visible to the naked eye, occur due to the diffraction of sunlight through ice crystals in the air. Unfortunately, they are becoming increasingly rare as average temperatures rise and weather patterns become more erratic. 

My fear that these breathtaking phenomena may someday vanish has made me pursue them in earnest. I hope my photographs can prompt people to be kinder towards the environment so that they will not be a mere record of their once brilliance.

Xuan-Hui Ng is from Singapore and now lives in Japan. She is represented by Koslov Larsen gallery in Houston. Her solo exhibitions include “Interludes” and “A Gracious Breath” at Koslov Larsen and “Transcendence: Awakening the Soul” at the Griffin Museum of Photography. 

She is a Critical Mass Top 50 Finalist in 2024 and a Top 200 Finalist in 2021, 2022 and 2023. Her work has been juried into exhibitions at Davis Orton Gallery, Southeast Center for Photography, Texas Photographic Society and New York Center for Photographic Art. Publications of her work have been featured in What Will You Remember?, fotoMAGAZIN, PetaPixel, ON landscape, forum naturfotografie, etc. BBC’s Cultural Frontline interviewed her on “Creativity and Mental Health”. She writes for ELEMENTS photography magazine, and is an instructor for Santa Fe Workshops and Nobechi Creative. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

xuanhuing.com

@xuanhui_ng