„Who are you?“
Fine Art Print on Hahnemühle Paper
Format 40 x 50, unframed, Edition 10 & 2 Aps,
Unnoticed everyday objects are transformed in front of the camera into playful figures and remarkable characters
„Balances“
Fine Art Print on Hahnemühle Paper
70 x 100, unframed, Edition 7 & 2 APs,
Stuff from everyday life, boxes piled on tin cans, cups wrestling with plates for balance. It could last forever, in this way, in this manner!
Find out more:
Website: christoph-honig.de
Instagram: @honigfoto
During Rotterdam Photo, I will show work from two projects: Contours and Under Water. A recurring theme in my work is transience, which expresses itself in the influence of time on the image. This also explains my love for analog photography, and in particular, for the Polaroid. The imperfection and unpredictability of the Polaroid resonate in my work.
Under Water
The changing nature around us is an important source of inspiration. With my Polaroids and analog photography, I create landscapes as I see them, where stillness arises. The Under Water project shows landscapes as they might become when the water rises.
Contours
In addition, I explore questions about what connects us. Specifically, I examine how family memories can inform different perspectives and how these memories are influenced by the passage of time. These issues express themselves in my work through digital distortions of analog photography and film from family archives. The layering of different materials creates a field of tension between different and sometimes contradictory temporalities, placing the family at the center of this.
Find out more:
Website: juliette-erkelens.nl
Instagram: @julietteerkelens
One thing leads to another
Marseille (in the south of France), a city with diverse influences and a rich cultural heritage, reveals itself through its clothing. This photographic series serves as a starting point for a deeper reflection on our roots and their impact on our lives. It is not just a work of memory but also a mirror that reflects the complexity of our shared heritage.
Focusing on the evolution of the Provençal costume, from past to present, the series traces the social, political, and cultural transformations that have shaped Western societies. Clothing becomes a language and a silent carrier of ancestral stories, engaging with the present to remind us of where we come from and to question the path we are on.
This project invites us to reconsider our cultural heritage by exploring the continuity between past and present. The anachronistic choice of locations, balancing tradition and modernity, adds another layer to this reflection, highlighting the coexistence of different eras in contemporary reality. Each piece of clothing thus becomes not only a symbol of identity but also a witness to our collective memory, connecting generations and reflecting our view of the world.
Find out more:
Website: florianjayet.fr
Instagram: @photo.florian
Reaching for Dusk
Borders are more than geographic divisions; they are systems of power that regulate movement, access, and exclusion. In Europe, borders define legal systems and cultures, granting privileges to some while restricting others. Modern borders are not just physical —they are biopolitical tools that determine who belongs and who is left behind.
For decades, European governments have outsourced border control to North Africa, turning Tunisia into a key transit and containment zone for people on the move. Policies designed to prevent movement towards Europe leave individuals stranded in limbo— trapped in detention centers, makeshift camps, or abandoned buildings. With no way forward and no way back, many face violence, exploitation, and death.
This project documents these hidden realities. In Tunisia, overcrowded cemeteries for those who drowned at sea, deserted landscapes marked by desperate journeys, and portraits of people stuck in limbo reveal the true cost of Europe’s border policies. The work explores the intersections of displacement, climate crisis, conflict, and structural exclusion—showing how borders create humanitarian emergencies rather than resolving them.
By focusing on Tunisia, Reaching for Dusk challenges dominant narratives about human mobility. It exposes the consequences of externalized border control and highlights the lives and experiences of those too often left unseen.
Find out more:
Website: stefanospaikos.com
Instagram: @stefanospaikos
Midnight Salvage
I explore what happens when I let go of control and allow nature to play an active role in the creation of images. I often work with analogue techniques, permitting natural elements to interact with light-sensitive materials. Wind, rain, shifting light, and organic matter leave their marks—either directly on photographic paper or within the frame of an image.
Plants, animals, birds’ nests, and other traces of the natural world appear in my work, telling stories of growth, decay, and renewal. Their silhouettes leave a void, hinting at what surrounds us yet is increasingly fading from view. What have we lost in our understanding of this interconnected world? What might we regain by attuning ourselves once again to its rhythms?
Chance and experimentation are central to my work: images take shape in dialogue with what appears, rather than through full control, and nature shapes meaning with me. Rather than viewing nature as a backdrop or a tool, I engage with it as an active force with its own value and agency. My work is less about documenting nature as it appears and more about rethinking our way of seeing—moving away from control toward a more reciprocal, attuned relationship with the living world.
Find out more:
Website: sophievandijken.com
Instagram: @sophie.van.dijken
The Fish Dies By Its Mouth / El pez muere por la boca
The Fish Dies By Its Mouth / El pez muere por la boca reflects on the resilience and resistance of peoples in contexts of drug trafficking and fishing. The beach line connects the sea (or river) with the continent (or mainland) where amphibious communities inhabit with long traditions of music, dance, hairstyles, games, and celebration. Also of agriculture, gastronomy, tourism, whale watching, and nature. This peace is permeated by paramilitary presence, violence, and drug trafficking.
Drug traffickers need access to the coast to get their product out to sea. During these trips in speedboats, they are intercepted by the Colombian Navy or naval force, and their way of escaping is to drop the cargo to make the boat lighter. Fishermen occasionally find packages that can mean a year’s income or one-week rumbas. Some succumb to this pressure; others stand firm in the face of the onslaught of illegality.
It is a participatory and intervention project in which the community is an active part in the creation of the images. The contrasts between traditions (peaceful states) and armed pressure (paramilitary and drug trafficking groups) are expressed in different actions, landscapes, bodies, and objects. Everyday life intermingles with the construction of the scenes.
Find out more:
Instagram: @escobart and @elpez_muereporlaboca
Cohousing
Cohousing has become increasingly popular in the West, with more people choosing to live in small communities or shared homes. This includes scenarios such as parents moving in with their adult children, friends buying a shared farmhouse together, or larger structures where 15 families live together with shared spaces and amenities.
Cohousing offers a solution to the shortage of affordable housing, but it also represents a new way of life in a society where social support is dwindling, and feelings of loneliness and isolation are becoming more prevalent.
As more people in Western Europe turn to cohousing to address the challenges of rising living costs, elder care, sustainable living, and combating feelings of loneliness and isolation, a wide range of alternative living options are becoming available.
In many European countries, it was once the norm for older adults to live with their adult children. However, due to socioeconomic changes, this dynamic shifted toward the use of nursing homes. Over the past three years, I have documented eleven different cohousing communities, aiming to offer a glimpse into why people are choosing to return to this lifestyle.
Find out more:
Website: ilvynjiokiktjien.com
Instagram: @ilvynjio
SILENT RADAR
“I may have more of a connection to my avatar than I do to my physical self. My VR self influences my real self and vice versa. I’m fully integrated at this point.” – Silent
Silent and Radar, two transgender friends who spend most of their time on the virtual reality platform VR Chat, have found there a true sense of belonging. This growing community of over 130,000 users has become a space to explore identity and overcome boundaries: walls, borders, language…
The rent-stabilized complex in which Radar lives with her family is the only home she has ever known. “I want to leave, but I cannot afford to… When I walk around, there’s a bunch of closed-down storefronts. I remember what used to be there. I walk and there’s five weed stores that all have the same fake linoleum wood floors and the same sh*tty neon signs.” For them, it’s never about the technology, but about the emotional need and how it is being satisfied.
Combining several photographic forms, this project confronts and blends the ideas of the real and the non-real, the virtual and the tangible, the digital and the analog. When both worlds start to merge, how is the ‘self’ defined? And what does it reveal about our real, tangible world?
Find out more:
Website: paolachapdelaine.com
Instagram: @paola.chapdelaine
Single Image – Together Apart
Find out more:
Website:darbyrouttenberg.com
Instagram: @jointheclubsandwich
Single Image – Queer Alienism
Find out more:
Website: carloshernandezstudios.com
Instagram: @carloshernandezstudios
