ARTISTS 2026

Joachim Schmid is an artist who has been working with found photographs and texts since the early eighties. His research questions, with a skeptical approach, the role of authorship and artistic intention in relation to the final outcome. A systematic collection of photographs without scientific or cataloguing purposes, but driven solely by the desire to reveal the vast hidden potential carried by images produced outside the artistic sphere.He published numerous artist books. His work has been exhibited internationally and is included in numerous collections. He lives in a populated place in Brandenburg, Germany.

With a practice that embraces both research and the active use of archives, Manuela Nebuloni structures her investigation of Ghana as a process of learning and inquiry. Since 2020, she has been working on the construction of a physical archive of postcards and ephemera from the sixties as a tool for critically reflecting on the present, with a particular interest in amateur artistic production as a space for experimentation. She is the founder and a member of Postbox Ghana, a project exploring collective memory through material culture.

Marco Lanza, born in Florence, where he currently lives and works, developed an interest in photography at a very young age, immediately embarking on an artistic research path that would lead him to exhibit both in Italy and internationally. His works have been published in international magazines including “The Sunday Times”, “Le Monde”, “Die Zeit”, “Creative Review”. He is the author of the volumes The Living Dead, Velatura, and Depositi. In 2005, together with his brother Saverio, he founded Pastis, a video art project that combines video, photography, and music.

He started taking photographs at the age of ten, and since then photography has become an integral part of his life—first as a passion and later as a profession. He worked as a fashion photographer for fifteen years between Milan and Paris before moving to Costa Rica, where he currently lives and works.

Throughout his career, alongside commissioned work for major magazines, he has continuously pursued his own personal projects and has participated in more than twenty exhibitions worldwide. In 2014, together with a group of friends, he co-founded Gigantic, an independent gallery in Milan. He is also one of the two founders, together with Luca Merli, of Onde Nostre, a surf video project that has received numerous awards at international festivals dedicated to the field.

Born and raised in a small village in Central Italy, Enrico Fagiani currently lives in the Bolognese Apennines. During his university years, he pursued a three-year specialization in Contemporary Photography at SpazioLabo’. He has a strong urge to experiment with images.

After growing up in Rome, Francesco Scarfone moved back to his birthplace to pursue bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Communication Design at the Politecnico di Milano. Currently based in Rotterdam, he works as a graphic and motion designer. His practice is driven by a deep understanding of a project’s conceptual value.

Salome Erni, born in Switzerland in 2001 and based in the Netherlands, is a research-based visual artist who explores narratives and collective narrations. Conversations, collaborations and research intertwine in her work that takes shape in (video) essays, books and exhibitions. Often, she takes found imagery as a starting point to investigate how the individual relates to larger socio-political power relations and hegemonic narrations. Thereby, she understands her work as explicitly political.

Next to her art practice she works as a curator for an artist-run space. Earlier professional experiences include multiple years of journalistic work and project coordination for a museum.

Jean-Marie Donat, born in 1962 in Paris (France), is an “iconophagous” artist, photography collector, and publisher.

Built over more than thirty years, his collection brings together around forty thousand photographs, ektachromes, and negatives from all over the world, covering more than a century of photographic history (1880-1990). Since the eighties, Donat has been developing this photographic corpus with the aim of offering a singular reading of the twentieth century.

In 2023, he co-founded the Vernacular Social Club, an international association bringing together enthusiasts, collectors, and professionals around vernacular photography.

Martina Bacigalupo is a photographer, photo editor, and curator whose practice unfolds at the crossroads of image-making and cultural dialogue. Based in Burundi for over a decade, she has developed a body of work cantered on the visual dynamics between Africa and the West, exploring shifting perspectives, circulation of images and questions of representation.
Her work is held in major international collections. A member of Agence VU’ in Paris, Martina is deeply committed to mentorship and to fostering South–South dialogues within the photographic community. Alongside her artistic and curatorial practice, she regularly contributes to international juries. After many years shaping visual narratives as photo editor for “XXI” and “6 Mois”, she now works with “Le Monde”.

Hoda Afshar, born in Iran in 1983, is a visual artist whose practice focuses on the intricate relationships between politics and aesthetics, knowledge and representation, visibility and violence. She is interested in the ways that image-making can either reinforce or challenge our common sense, and the forces that shape perception. Her works invite audiences to reflect on and to rethink how and what we see.
Afshar’s artistic practice embraces a variety of media and approaches – primarily using photography and video, though her recent projects have involved working with archival images.
Afshar’s work has been widely exhibited, published and is part of numerous private and public collections. Throughout her career, she has also received numerous prestigious art awards and prizes.

Beyond promoting awareness and fostering public engagement with vernacular photography through exhibitions and educational activities, ARCHIVIO VIVO encourages the active involvement of local communities through the collection of research materials (amateur and archival photographs), creating a documentary foundation that serves both as a repository of local memory and as a resource for new contemporary art projects. Through the projects developed within ARCHIVIO VIVO, the association GU.PHO. – Centro per la fotografia vernacolare APS is also building a stable regional network through a series of satellite initiatives.