Artist: Giacomo Brunelli / Italy

I have been working on the series of animals for five years and with them I want to photograph my own reaction in their presence.

When I was a child I used to spend time playing with animals and I think that is why I push the lens often to its closest point of focus, almost touching the subject and forcing flight or fight from the animal, which is when I then re

cord its reaction.”

All the animals I photograph are found in the backyards, small villages, fields, and farms and I call the way I work “animal-focused street photography”.

Once I see an animal that I want to photograph, I try to ignore it then I run after it which usually gains a response; sometimes I just stare at it and see what happens. Their reactions are different, sometimes they are curious about the camera and sometimes they get scared about the noise of the shutter. When I am dealing with dead animals I pick them up from the ground and place them where I think the setting works. In this case my interaction with the animal is a way to give purpose to something that it no longer has

Artist: ishola akpo / BENINOIS

Born in Ivory Coast in 1983, Ishola Akpo is an artist and photographer multimedia. He works about digital images to create his own visual universe with colors and figurative forms and then renew the “collage” practice. He claims their formal artificiality to reveal the depth of their sense. Deliberately constructed, these images refer to African realities. Mixing his themes, he explores their metaphors that still allow multiple levels of interpretation. He received an award from the Heinrich Boell Foundation in 2010 and he’s the finalist of the session FreeLens webdoc Photography Festival in Toulouse in 2012

Artist: Jacqueline van der Venne / The Netherlands

Jacqueline van der Venne has studied both graphic and advertising design, illustrative arts, and photography. In 1987, she graduated from the Art Academy in Maastricht, and has since seen several years of steady employment in the field of graphic arts and design. Since 1982, Jacqueline has exhibited her work both in The Netherlands and abroad.

Her work includes

photography, paintings on canvas and drawings on paper, strongly combined with the use of new media. Jacqueline works as an artist, graphic designer, photographer, web designer and lecturer in art & design. In 2005, she earned her teaching degree and has taught at both primary and secondary school, where she offered courses in drawing, arts & crafts and CKV (arts and cultural education).

People in all possible aspects are central to her work, in which she searches for the ultimate shapes and colours to make her art vibrant and dynamic. Beauty is the essence of her art, and communication through it is her main theme. Jacqueline finds that a successful work of art is one that evokes feelings that may be either positive or negative.

Jacqueline van der Venne lives and works in the Netherlands