The Centre de la photographie Genève renews its mentoring programme for artists and photographers in 2024, aiming to support them in the development of a project. This format is based on a 1:1 mentorship where an artist supports another artist in the development and realisation of an ongoing project. The mentorship takes the form of four meetings, either in person or online, over a six-month period from July 2024 to December 2024.
The programme is open to any professional artist or photographer (including self-taught) who is not, during the period of the mentorship, enrolled in another mentorship programme or academic course (including art or photography school) and who speaks one of the following languages: French, English, Italian, Arabic, German, Farsi, Vietnamese.
Each of the seven mentors will choose a project they wish to support from the pool of applications, based on the artist’s expectations and the support they feel they can provide to the artist. Those selected for mentoring will receive a sum of CHF 500 at the end of the programme to support the development of their project.
Applications are open from 14 June to 7 July 2024.
Application to the programme is free.
Applications can be made only through the online application form.
Artists and photographers of any age and nationality, based in any country, can participate provided they meet the following criteria:
- Having a project in progress, i.e. already started but not yet completed.
- Not being enrolled in another mentoring programme or academic course during the mentoring period (July 2024 to December 2024)
- Speaking fluently at least one of the following languages: French, English, Italian, Arabic, German, Farsi, Vietnamese.
- Committing to being available for four meetings, in person or online, during the mentoring period (no extension possible).
- Filling in the application form clearly and in full, including sending the description of the current project, by 7 July 2024.
- Agreeing to have their name and project information shared within the context of the programme.
The applicants selected by the mentors will be contacted in early July 2024. Applicants cannot give a preference for one particular mentor, and mentors agree not to select the project of a person with whom they already have a significant relation. Apart from this criterion, mentors do not have to justify their choice of project.
The project support amount (CHF 500) will be paid out at the end of the mentoring period (after the 4th meeting). There is no need to justify the use of this amount.
In case of problems, the team of the Centre de la photographie Genève can be contacted at any time by the mentors or mentees.
Format and duration of the mentoring
At the beginning of the first meeting, the mentor and mentee agree on the central aspects of the mentoring and sign a simple agreement summarising these aspects. They set together the dates of the meetings.
The mentoring is based on a series of four meetings, either online or in person, planned by agreement between the mentor and the mentee between July and December 2024, with no extension possible, in order to facilitate the progress of the mentee’s project.
Depending on the location of the artists and mentors, meetings may take place in person or online. If one or more meetings take place in person and the artist or mentor travels more than 15 km, a travel allowance of up to CHF 150 may be granted (reimbursement upon presentation of receipts).
A final moment of exchange is planned with all participants who wish to do so, in order to present the projects and to discuss them. Depending on the location of the participants, this moment will take place online or in person, or in a hybrid format, yet to be determined.
The mentors 2024
Olga Cafiero is a Swiss-Italian photographer, born in Como in 1982. After growing up in Geneva, she obtained a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in photography at ECAL (École cantonale d’art de Lausanne). Her work has been regularly exhibited since 2009 in Switzerland and abroad and published in international magazines. Her awards include Foam Talent (shortlisted), Hyères Festival de Mode et de Photographie (finalist), BFF-Forderpreis (laureate), the Swiss Design Award (laureate in 2011 and shortlisted in 2022), and the Neuchâtel Photographic Survey (laureate in 2019).
Her work is distinguished by a precise approach to photography, in which it is both a tool for the construction of knowledge about the world and a narrative device, as well as a vector of sensations and emotions. For the past ten years, her practice has articulated art, history and different branches of scientific research. Investigation is central to her work, and is as much a matter of rigorous and interdisciplinary research into a subject as it is an integral part of her creative process.
Languages: French, Italian, English
https://olgacafiero.com/
Instagram @cafieroolga
Léonie Rose Marion’s work focuses on different topics related to territory, geology and the photographic medium. Her exploration of the physical qualities and the materiality of photography is rooted in documentary fieldwork, whether it’s the melting of glaciers in her work Surfaces reliques, produced using out-of-date Polaroids, or her latest project Relever la nuit (Surveying the night), in which she attempts to measure light pollution using photograms. This project was awarded by the City of Geneva’s photographic grant in 2022.
Her work has been exhibited in various Swiss institutions such as the Centre de la photographie Genève, Photo Elysée, the Centre d’Art Pasquart in Bienne and IPFO-Haus der Fotografie in Olten. She also works as an art educator at the Centre de la photographie Genève and at Destination vingt-sept, an association for people in precarious situations. She is a graduate of the Vevey School of Photography and the Geneva University of Art and Design (HEAD-Geneva).
Languages: French, English and Italian, some exchanges are possible in German
https://www.leoniemarion.ch
Instagram @leonierosemarion
Thi My Lien Nguyen is a Swiss-Vietnamese photographer and artist based in Switzerland. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Camera Arts from the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts in 2017.
In her artistic practice she deals with the feeling and understanding of belonging, participation and the sense of home, whereas she is strongly interested in diasporic and post-migrant realities and stories. Through participatory and inclusive methods, performative, storytelling and culinary activations she seeks to establish more inclusive spaces to create more understanding and representations between communities. She works with traditions, rituals, folklore, photography and food.
Her work has been exhibited in multiple exhibitions including the Athens Photo Festival (2024), 22nd Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil in São Paulo (2023), Museum Haus Konstruktiv Zürich (2023), Plat(t)form, Fotomuseum Winterthur (2022), Photo Hanoi, Vincom Center for Contemporary Art (VCCA) (2021). Nguyen is part of the curatorial team at Les Complices*, a self-organised community-based off-space in Zurich, committed to support the ideas and works of queer, trans, inter, non-binary, women* and BIPoC.
Languages: German, English, some exchanges are possible in Vietnamese (spoken)
https://myliennguyen.ch
Instagram @myliennguyen
Danaé Panchaud is a Swiss exhibition curator, museologist and lecturer specialising in photography. She has been the director of the Centre de la photographie Genève since 2022, after serving from 2018 to 2021 as director and curator of the Photoforum Pasquart in Biel, Switzerland. She trained in photography at the Vevey School of Photography before completing a bachelor’s degree in visual arts with a specialisation in curatorial practices at Geneva University of Art and Design. She later studied museology at Birkbeck, University of London, earning a master’s degree in 2017. She has held positions in several Swiss institutions in the fields of contemporary art, design and science, including the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, where she was a research associate from 2007 to 2012, the Gallery SAKS in Geneva in 2012-2013, the Fondation Verdan in Lausanne as scientific collaborator, and the mudac in Lausanne, where she was in charge of the public relations from 2012 to 2017. As a free-lance curator, she has curated exhibitions for several Swiss and international museums, independent spaces and galleries since 2012. She regularly writes texts for monographs of contemporary artists, exhibition catalogues, and thematic publications such as Flora Photographica, co-authored with William Ewing and published by Thames & Hudson in 2022. She was a lecturer at the Vevey School of Photography from 2014 to 2018. She regularly lectures at art and photography schools in Switzerland, and in 2023, she joined the teaching faculty of the CAS in Theory and History of Photography at University of Zurich.
Languages: French, English
https://danaepanchaud.net
Instagram @danaepanchaud
Laurence Rasti’s photographs seek to explore concepts of identity in a multifaceted way. Relying on the dual quality of her cultural background, she looks at cultural codes and conventions from a new angle in order to understand the influence of gender roles in society, but also the consequences of migration or the non-respect of fundamental rights.
In 2017 she published the book There Are No Homosexuals in Iran with Edition Patrick Frey and was shortlisted at the Paris Photo Aperture First Photobook Award, the Author Book Award of the Rencontres d’Arles and nominated as one of the 10 best photobooks of 2017 by the New York Times Magazine. Her work has been exhibited in various groups and solo exhibitions around the world, including ReGeneration3 at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Disruptive Perspectives at the Museum of Contemporary in Chicago and Photoforum Pasquart, Iran Contemporary at Fotohof Art Gallery in Austria, and different festivals like PhotoKatmandu, Vis-à-Vis Fotodocks or Tokyo International Photography Festival.
Since 2020, she has been teaching artistic practices related to photography in the bachelor programme of EDHEA – École de design et haute école d’art du Valais.
Languages: French, English, Farsi (spoken)
http://laurencerasti.ch/
Instagram @laurencerasti
Abdo Shanan was born in 1982 in Oran, Algeria to a Sudanese father and an Algerian mother. Abdo studied Telecommunications Engineering at the University of Sirte, Libya until 2006. In 2012, he undertook an internship at Magnum Photos Paris, which gave him the opportunity to reflect on his photographic approach. In 2015, Abdo received a nomination for Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund, the Same year he co-founded collective220, a collective for Algerian photographers. A year later in 2016 his series Diary:Exile was selected by the Addis Fotofest. Abdo in 2019 won The CAP Prize (Contemporary African Photography) for his project Dry, in the same year he was selected for Joop Swart Masterclass by World Press Photo. In 2020, he was a winner of The Premi Mediterrani Albert Camus Incipiens. In the same year, he co-curated Narratives from Algeria at Photoforum Pasquart in Bienne, Switzerland. In 2022, he was one of Sheikh Saoud Al Thani Awards for his project A Little Louder. He had the same year his first solo show at Centre de la photographie Genève.
Languages: Arabic, English, French
https://www.abdoshanan.com/
Ann Shelton (b. 1967, Pākehā/Italian) identifies as queer and lives in Aotearoa (maori name for New Zealand) and exhibits internationally. Shelton’s work engages with questions around the disciplined body, and how that discipline is organised around gender, sexuality, misogyny, medicine, food, or crime.
Her most recent research engages with plant knowledge and the impacts of plants on the body, particularly their history relating to the re-construction of the role of women in Western Society since the witch hunts in early modern Europe, the role of plants historically in reproductive contexts, in relation to contemporary feminisms and the current climate emergency.
Shelton’s work has been extensively reviewed in publications including Artforum, Hyperallergic, artnet news, and Evergreen Review. Shelton is represented in Aotearoa (New Zealand) by Two Rooms. Her work is collected in public and private contexts throughout Aotearoa, Australia, and North America. Her museum survey, Dark Matter, curated by Zara Stanhope (Director, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery) was hosted by Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in 2016 and toured to Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū in 2017. Shelton’s exhibition worm, root, wort… & bane at Alice Austen House in March 2024 was her first institutional solo exhibition in the United States.
She is an Honorary Research Fellow in Photography at Whiti o Rehua School of Art, Massey University, Aotearoa and holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia, Canada.
Languages: English
https://www.annshelton.com
Instagram @annshelton_