When curating this exhibition, our core mission was to amplify young artists’ careers and affectively “watch” them grow and evolve in their emerging careers. We had no idea what this would mean in 2019, but 2020 showed us that this would be a year to document, and we continue to watch and learn from these young photographers.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

MYRIAM BOULOS B. 1992 | BEIRUT, LEBANON

Myriam graduated with a master’s degree in photography from the Academie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts in 2015. She has taken part in both national and international collective exhibitions, including two solo exhibitions. Myriam uses her camera to question the city, its people, and her place among them. Her photo series are mixes of documentary and personal research. 

“NIGHTSHIFT focuses on parties that take place in industrial places in Beirut. These venues gather social bubbles of my generation that stand against Beirut’s mainstream bling-bling. I followed young women who appear all at once strong and fragile, determined and vulnerable. Like me, these women are constantly changing in a society that is also undergoing permanent evolution. This project questions the place of women in a patriarchal capitalist society where self-discovery, self-preservation, and resistance come in different forms.”

REMY LAGRANGE B. 1991 | NEW YORK, NY

Remy Lagrange was born in Chicago, Illinois, and graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 2014 with a BFA in Photography. He moved to New York in 2014. He has spent five years working for Annie Leibovitz as an archivist, print production manager, and assistant designer. He runs around taking photos and putting together exhibitions and books of his work during the night and weekends.

SWALLOWS AT SEA “These photos in front of you…I’d be more than happy to tell you about them. They all have a story behind them: why I have chosen them, taking them, etc. But this knowledge does not matter from me to you. You are looking at art. Think of this as a puzzle or choose your own adventure story. I’ll give you a hint: we don’t speak about what hurts us.”

SILVIA GRAV B. 1993 | LOS ANGELES, CA

At the age of 18, Silvia dropped out of the first year of her Fine Arts program. It was then that her work got discovered and became known worldwide, and in 2014, Flickr recognized her as one of the “20 Under 20”, an award given to the best young photographers worldwide. That opportunity took her to the United States for the first time. Since then, she’s spent almost all her days between Los Angeles and airplanes while exhibiting and working worldwide.

“LOST PHOTOGRAPHS are taken from when it all started until today and will probably continue for as long as I am alive. For the longest time, I struggled with not understanding where my imagery came from. For years, I ignored I went through trauma, experiencing dissociation and a strangely accepted depression, which I believed to be the “normal” amount of sadness for a human being my age. I was so grateful to be alive that I believed these feelings were just the price to pay for it. These images are one more of the ways I found to explode. And it worked: my work took me to a life I never imagined possible, and to people who became the mirror I needed to understand my own experience finally.”

WOLFGANG BOHUSCH B. 1985 | VIENNA, AUSTRIA

Bohusch decided to become a photographer at the early age of thirteen when he began experimenting with his grandmother’s old darkroom equipment and shooting with a 35mm camera. After studying photography for five years at “die, Graphische Wien,” he started working as a freelance production manager, location scout, and later as a photographer, director of production, and advertising director for film production companies.

With his series’ SILICONE BASED CREATURES,‘ Wolfgang Bohusch invites the viewer to stand in front of his photographs, meditate, and let the mind wander into the subconscious. Every work tells a different story, your own story. There are no titles, no hints for interpretation, and no directions to guide you through your viewing experience. Like in a Rorschach test, Bohusch wants you to find your associations and recognize patterns that are not given, rendering every photograph an individual experience.

YORIYAS B. 1984 | CASABLANCA, MOROCCO

Yassine Alaoui Ismaili, also known as Yoriyas, is a Casablanca-based photographer and performance artist. Yoriyas started playing chess when he was five years old, falling in love with mathematics. And by the age of 16, the influence of Hip Hop music and culture had paved a new path for his life, as he became a breakdancer. While traveling around the world in 2013 as a professional dancer in competitions, he experienced a severe knee injury that halted his dance career, paving the way for a new artistic transformation: photography as a means of self-expression.

“CASABLANCA NOT THE MOVIE is a project that I started in 2014. This series is a love letter to the city I call home and an effort to nuance the visual record for those whose exposure to Morocco’s famous city is limited to guide book snapshots, film depictions, or Orientalist fantasies. Casablanca is a city of diverse cultures shaped by numerous currents that may seem in opposition. I remember being a kid and going to the roof of my family’s building and looking out onto the seaside and the horizon. For me, Casablanca was the end of the world. I want to convey the real street life and situations of Casablanca and highlight the moments where these cultures meet, which we would overlook if not in a photograph from the perspective of a Moroccan, who was born, grew up, and still lives there.’’