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PHOTOGRAPHY

Mirielle Alina Rohr – Girls Manufactured

by Mirielle Alina Rohr

Girls Manufactured is a series of five ceramic vases, each representing a social media–driven aesthetic identity such as the Tradwife or Femme Fatale. These identities commodify femininity through strict visual and lifestyle codes that often lean towards conservative ideals and pleasing the male gaze. The photographer generated images with AI using datasets that I tied to each identity and integrated her own face to reflect her dual role as viewer and target scrolling through social media. The images I then transferred onto the vases using a technique that merges image and clay. The vases reference femininity through containment and decoration, while their form, based on Panathenaic amphorae, once awarded to male victors in ancient Greece, links ancient symbols of patriarchy to today's curated ideals.

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Francesca Bergamini – Pretty in Pink

by Francesca Bergamini

When male desire turns into violence, it often begins with the objectification of the female body. Pretty in Pink reclaims those bodies: low-res thumbnails of 3D nude female models—created by male designers for digital porn, idealized and passive—are altered using the same 3D tools that shaped them. The curves stop seducing. They become hostile, almost threatening. 3D-printed at life-size, these figures stand like anti-monuments, exposing outdated power. Installed as a narrative path, from glossy pink columns to a white-on-white final piece, the viewer moves through stages of desire, distortion, and fear. What was once virtually consumed by the male gaze now returns with physical weight, uncensored presence, and resistance.

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Jose Martin Martinez – L’Eternité Reste

by Jose Martin Martinez

Briefly after leaving his country, the photographer met his first friends, Serhii and Yelyzaveta, two Ukrainian teenagers, and past lovers, forced to flee together the Russian occupation of Ukraine. Thus, a two year passage begun, with the trials and tribulations that come from love, death, war and solitude. L'Eternité Reste (Eternity Remains) is a documentation, at times abstract, at times literal, often cinematographic, of this story. An unapologetic coming of age story, released from the idealized, fantastic and vulgar narratives showcased in Hollywood and social media. This book functions as an "exchange currency" of sorts against the distorted social apparatus of "reality". Furthermore, the book, pretends to leave an indelible record of this "love story", inextricably linked to a contemporary historical conflict.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Nabarun Gogoi – The Swan

by Nabarun Gogoi

In this short film, the photographer used a CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) avatar to address and question contemporary notions of masculinity and the complex relationship it shares with love. Inspired by the photographer's own apprehensions related to connecting with other men, the short film uncovers the subtle yet forceful indoctrination of masculine perceptions of power and control. These perceptions clash vehemently with the vulnerability that comes with loving another and the emotions it evokes, thus condemning men to an internal prison of shame and self-betrayal. Created using a gaming engine, the film aims to confront this dilemma and hints at the need to adopt a more nuanced version of masculinity - one where the self is no longer compromised to cater to the insecurities of the many.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Riccardo Androni – Exhaustion

by Riccardo Androni

Exhaustion is a critical and ironic response to the performance-driven society the photographer inhabits — one that demands constant motion, visibility, and productivity. Through absurd and site-specific gestures in public spaces, he confronts machines of efficiency and elevation with deliberate resistance. The photographer climbs down an escalator, blocks a door with his head, bends to stay in frame. These futile acts follow a strict protocol and expose the tragic emptiness behind endless self-performance. With dry humor and physical endurance, Exhaustion seeks to unmask a system that rewards conformity and erases meaning — until all that remains is exhaustion.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Min Dai – Rate My Cake

by Min Dai

Rate My Cake is a project about hunger — for sugar, for attention, for love. It is an attempt to stay with that hunger. To let it speak – not in language, but in images. The project is realised with artificial intelligence, although the word ‘realised’ seems too simplistic here. The machine and the photographer coexisted, reflected each other. It was like whispering secrets into a dark well and watching strange, sweet shapes emerge. The cakes in the images are not real. They’re too soft, too glossy, too wrong in just the right way. They’re overlit, undercooked, melting. They seem to wait for something too – approval, attention, maybe love.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Visvaldas Morkevicius – Ergot

by Visvaldas Morkevicius

Ergot is a toxic fungus used as a metaphor for digital intoxication. Drawing on psychopolitics, simulacra, and techno-feudalism, this work explores how identity, pleasure, and power are distorted under platform capitalism. It constructs a pixel world of hypermasculine avatars, stylised violence, and dopamine-fuelled objects using AI, CGI, photogrammetry, and glitch. Vapes, crystals, and supplements reflect commodified desire, while dancing police and custom weapons expose gamified violence. Realised as a triptych of three 110×250 cm plexiglass panels, the piece mirrors the seductive toxicity it critiques.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Daniel Martinez – A River Has No Shore

by Daniel Martinez

Flowing from an Alpine glacier to the Mediterranean Sea, the Rhône River runs through ice caves, forests, cities and industrial sites. It sustains ecosystems, defines geographies and connects cultures across space and time. However, the boundless flux of the world’s waters today faces increasing stories of tragedy and collapse. Climate change doesn’t manifest only on a material level but also overwhelms the emotional dimension of human life. Today, the psychological toll of environmental crisis amplifies states of eco-anxiety and solastalgia, triggered by lived experiences, mediated imagery and narratives of apocalyptic breakdown. A River Has No Shore reflects on the distress caused by climate change and its representation by looking at the water along the Rhône River in its endless forms.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Eva Manuela Rivas Bao – An Italian Story

by Eva Manuela Rivas Bao

Starting from the trial of former Italian president Berlusconi, An Italian Story examines Italian-Moroccan model and aspiring sports journalist Imane Fadil. Attending the ex-president’s parties, she was a key witness, confessing abuse of power and underage prostitution at his residence in Arcore, near Milan. In 2019, she died at 34, weeks after announcing her upcoming book. Berlusconi reduced the representation of women in Italy to few pixels. The book manipulates "photographic leftovers" and documentary pictures at Imane’s Milan house with AI, aiming to recreate missing images that Fadil shared in court. Deconstructing "an Italian story" - famouspropaganda zine of the ex-president - to reconstruct another Italian story, a collective memory from the rubble of the "Italian failed Me Too" (2010-2023).

PHOTOGRAPHY

Elisa Azevedo – Daydream

by Elisa Azevedo

Daydream is an intimate exploration of sexuality, embodiment, and the search for connection in a world increasingly shaped by performance and consumption. The photographic series began with an investigation of highly sexualized spaces — environments where the body often appears fragmented, mediated, and as a representation. Present, yet absent, lingering only as a trace of desire. By reenacting some of these gestures herself, the photographer embodies a role and expectation that she cannot naturally fulfill. This performative process reveals the dissonance between imposed ideals and personal reality. Through photography, feelings of loneliness, inadequacy, and vulnerability are confronted — but also curiosity, longing, and the wish for a more sincere relation to her own body and her own sense of intimacy.

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Doyoung Kim – Flattened Roughness

by Doyoung Kim

The work Flattened Roughness explores war image consumption and resulting guilt. The photographer collects and prints images of death then lick and absorb them physically, confronting the emotional and physical distance created by media. Suicide drones’ cameras constantly calculate distance to humans for destruction. In this process, the distance between humans is forgotten. To overcome this distance, he brings the images into my body. This act, where intimacy and brutality coexist, transforms voyeurism into mourning and care, confronting my lost humanity. Through sensory performance, he bridges the gap between himself and mediated death, exploring the clash of dulled emotion and sensation. This confessional, physically exhausting work explores alternative sensory approaches for the recovery of broken humanity.

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Eriko Miyata – Chronicle Void

by Eriko Miyata

Chronicle Void explores how Japanese pop culture portrays women and shapes societal attitudes, especially around normalized sexual harassment. Growing up female in Japan and later moving to Europe revealed to the photographer how deep implicit biases run across cultures. This video installation blends personal memories with public symbols like anti-harassment signs. Using biased AI filters on childhood photos, she reveals how memory and identity are shaped by social bias. Referencing Japan’s selfie culture, the photographer experiments with AI and video to critique identity, memory, and cultural influence.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Soft Photography

with Salomé Chatriot, Charlie Engman, Simon Lehner Milo Keller, Marco De Mutiis, Claus Gunti, Clément Lambelet, Giulia Bini, Simone Niquille

Soft Photography is a research project conducted by the Master of Photography at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne with the support of the HES-SO. It aims to shed light on the role of human emotions in the creation and reception of images produced using generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) or computer-generated imagery (CGI).

PHOTOGRAPHY

Contemporary Photography - Spring 2025 - MAP1

with Kim Knoppers

Do Not Disturb – Curating in Progress The course Do Not Disturb – Curating in Progress is designed to give students a sneak peek into the craft of curating an exhibition from the perspective of an independent curator (formerly at Foam, Amsterdam 2011-2021). The course teaches to engage with the historical, theoretical, and practical matters of curating a photography exhibition, with issues regarding the desperate desire of mankind to display objects, the photography exhibition in the digital age, the blending of photography with other disciplines in a physical space, Imaging the Anthropocene and Photography in Times of Radical Change. Students were invited to create a group exhibition with a physical model and an online solo exhibition with their own work.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Self-Initiated Project - Spring 2025 - MAP1

with Bruno Ceschel

The course is a platform for the development of personal projects that arise from the desire and curiosity of each student. The basic concept of the work must be relevant to the field of contemporary photographic images. Each project can take a different form depending on the specificities, contents and inclinations of each participant. From books to multimedia installations, from performance to CGI, group discussions will articulate a plural vision of photography’s applications today.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Applied Photography - Spring 2025 - MAP1

with Charlie Engman

This course explores contradiction, ambiguity, and authorship in photographic meaning and the role of aesthetics in shaping an image’s function across contexts. Photography operates in a complex space where visual style, context, and audience expectations interact to produce meaning. This course asks students to examine how photographic aesthetics influence interpretation and how an image’s function shifts when adapted for different applied photography frameworks. This course explores contradiction and ambiguity in photographic meaning and the role of aesthetic conventions in shaping an image’s function across contexts. Through the course, students will be expected to develop a coherent series of at least 10 images that applies a distinct treatment or aesthetic to a subject matter or multi-image narrative not typically represented in that style or aesthetic. Through this process, students will examine how visual codes, contextual shifts, and aesthetic strategies influence interpretation.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Materialized Photography- Spring 2025 - MAP1

with Felicity Hammond

In this module, we will explore the potential for the photographic image to simultaneously be a backdrop, object, and prop. We will make images both for the purpose of being re-imaged and for their sculptural possibilities, ending in a work that investigates the potential for an endless cycle of images and objects. Crucially, we will consider the staging of the work, and the conceptual and physical site for which it is intended.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Workshop - Simon Lehner

with Simon Lehner, Milo Keller, Clément Lambelet

For this workshop, ECAL invited Simon Lehner, a Vienna-based visual artist whose interdisciplinary practice spans photography, 3D rendering, AI-generated imagery, lens-based paintings, and sculptures. Social media algorithms manipulate memory and emotions by trapping users in echo chambers of repetitive imagery and ideas. These visual cycles exploit memory processes, triggering emotional responses—such as fear, envy, or desire—that reinforce behavioral patterns. Corporations leverage photographic images to target insecurities, activating primal instincts to drive consumption and engagement. Before the workshop, students were invited to reflect on their personal echo chambers—encountered on their social media feeds. They were asked to think about the following: • What trends or niches were suggested to you? • Which emotions played a role in these trends? • What emotional responses did they trigger in you? By analyzing these patterns, students gained insight into how photographic images and algorithms influence memory, emotions, and behavior. This critical awareness serveed as a foundation for exploring the broader societal implications of visual media.

PHOTOGRAPHY

We Do The Rest - PERFORMANCE WORKSHOP & EXHIBITION

with Augustin Lignier, Milo Keller, Clément Lambelet

From image capture to distribution, "We do the Rest" explores the notions of effort and bodily constraint in contemporary photographic mechanics. Through a series of spectacular and deceptive per-formances, Master Photography students at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne translate the gestures and the actions of visual fabrication with humor and absurdity. The project, conducted by Augustin Lignier, recalls the radical performances of the 60%, revisited in the digital age, when audiences are mainly virtual, and relationships are reduced to pixels. In search of permanent validation, we evolve in a digital theater governed by cameras, screens, and algorithms. We invite you to dive into these simulations, for real. And it's up to you to press the shutter... "We do the Rest" was created as a workshop during the second semester and was further developed in Italy, where it celebrated its premiere at the Biennale dell'Immagine di Chiasso. The constantly reimagined project was later presented at the Rencontres d'Arles 2024 photography festival, where it found a wide audience. The third and final edition was presented at ECAL in September 2024, closing the circle and illustrating the dynamic development process.

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Materialized Photography - Automn 2024

with Alix Marie

This course led by Alix Marie explored the creation and invention of visual languages for lens-based photographic objects and focused on the transformation of images into materialised forms. Students explored the practices of contemporary artists such as Katja Novitskova, Thomas Ruff, Seth Price and others and learnt how technologies such as CGI and photogrammetry have influenced artistic expression. The students explored the interplay between digital and physical spaces and developed unique approaches to creating photographic objects. The course focused on understanding historical and contemporary trends, analysing artists' case studies and creating materialised works, including single images, 3D objects, installations and immersive media such as AR and VR. Through research and practice, students conceptualised and materialised projects and presented their work as physical installations or objects. They developed the ability to articulate the meaning behind their creations, critique and collaborate with colleagues to expand their artistic practice.

PHOTOGRAPHY

SELF-INITIATED PROJECT - Automn 2024 - MAP2

with Katy Hundertmark

This module assists the students to develop into a finalized work a project that further expands their interests and research. The module gives the opportunity to take some of the ideas, skills and themes explores in the first semester and make into a brand new work that can take any possible form: a book, an installation, an online project, a performance.

PHOTOGRAPHY

ECAL x AREA OF WORK - CO-EXISTENCE

with Area Of Work, Milo Keller

ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne has teamed up with Paris-based studio Area of Work at Paris Photo to present CO-EXISTENCE, a monumental immersive installation in the heart of Paris’s 11th arrondissement, from 7 to 9 November 2024. In a large metropolis, a small, seemingly empty apartment reveals discreet traces of human presence. On another scale, a conquering population manifests itself. Wings flap, slime trails, antennae shivers... In the industrial setting of the former Garage République in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, CO-EXISTENCE showcases a living cohabitation through a sequence of artificial images created using Computer Generated Imagery (CGI). These spectacular yet intimate photo-realistic projections highlight the imperceptible, the infra- thin, and the invisible, blurring the scales between micro and macro. Developed during three series of workshops conducted from 2023 to autumn 2024 by Area of Work, CO- EXISTENCE bears witness to the technical and artistic skills that are honed within the ECAL MA Photography. These workshops enabled students to transpose their photographic skills into the virtual space of 3D graphics to understand the temporal, artistic, and commercial issues involved in creating CGI. ‘This collaboration offered ECAL students an introduction to the tools and possibilities of 3D graphics, exploring their integration into the processes of creating photorealistic and hyper-realistic images, while highlighting the importance of the artistic and cinematographic dimensions that are at the heart of our identity.’ – Amine Ghorab & Scott Renau, Area of Work, Paris. Founded in Paris in 2018 by artists and directors Amine Ghorab and Scott Renau, Area of Work is known for its distinctive contemporary visual narratives, blending graphic framing and rigorous photographic direction. Specialising in fashion, luxury, and technology, the creative studio has become a major player in contemporary visual storytelling..

PHOTOGRAPHY

Applied Photography - Fall 2024

with Charles Negre

This course focuses on the ability to answer a commission within one’s own artistic practice, guiding students towards a deeper understanding of studio photography, the challenges of constructed images and the processes involved. With an emphasis on still life photography, this applied photography course aims to sharpen the students sensivity to photographing and interpreting objects. For this semester, the group of students will conceptualize, shoot, and designed an alternative issue of Paperboy Magazine. Founded by David McKendrick three years ago, Paperboy will serve as the creative platform for this project.

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Self-Initiated Project - Fall 2024 - MAP1

with Milo Keller

PHOTOGRAPHY

Photobook - Fall 2024

with Bruno Ceschel

The photobook module introduces students to the history of photobooks and artists’ books and leads them to consider different strategies and approaches to contemporary book-making. In the first term students individually conceptualised a publication that have been designed, printed and distributed.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Fabienne Watzke – Lately I’ve been dreaming in pink and blue

by Fabienne Watzke

As a child, people assumed I liked pink and not blue. In today's imagination, pink is feminine, but it was once a masculine color. Lately I've been dreaming in pink and blue shows how our stereotypical thought patterns and visual representations of gender push women into predefined roles and project certain expectations onto them that manifest inequality. In my work, I take these traditional gender norms and challenge and break them by appropriating something extremely masculine like the knight ‘s armor and deconstructing it with different gender symbols and codes. The knights armor symbolizes the patriarchy in which we live. It is a shell designed for a specific type of body. Through symbolic bridges I highlight how deep rooted the modern "knight" mentality is still existing today.

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Amélie Tricaud – Elle rêvait des loups

by Amélie Tricaud

This work illustrates an attraction to the masculine, a deep desire to be embodied in a different body, assumed to be my opposite. This obsession, built through the accumulation of male images, shows what I covet, what I wish to carry within myself, without being able to access it. Throughout the 250 pages of the book, I question my gaze and my notion of beauty by idealizing these bodies, objectifying them, or reducing them to abstraction, attempting to subvert gendered and stereotypical ideals of femininity and masculinity. It is a reflection on the idea of the muse, reversing the power dynamics between the female muse and the male artist, and a mirror on the vast existing corpus representing female figures, on how their bodies are always depicted, scrutinized, fragmented, and contorted.

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Tianyu Wang – Hiding and Seeking

by Tianyu Wang

I focused on the invisible violence and oppression against women within the family environment. I deconstruct the postures women should take in their daily life to resist patriarchal culture. From personal experiences, I reconsider the scenes of family violence, the immediate feelings, the "body memory". I create scenes that blend reality and imagination, symbolically representing the self that is imprisoned, oppressed, and resisting within the family environment. My work responds to the everyday, breaking traditional discipline imposed on women within the family, and deconstructing the facade of daily life. This fundamentally critiques and resists the power dynamics of the traditional binary gender structure represented by "home", as well as the discipline and oppression of individuals.

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Bor Cvetko – TRIBE’S STARLINK HOOKUP RESULTS IN PORN ADDICTION!!!

by Bor Cvetko

The project explores existential dread from passive digital media spectatorship. We’re bombarded with distressing news, funny videos, happy moments, images of death, and posts by friends and celebrities. This endless stream causes disconnection, numbness, and exhaustion. A recurring element in my project is the white plastic chair, symbolising relaxation. These chairs now represent lost support and balance. I include archaeological elements to reflect on the decaying present and uncertain future. Pictures are mounted on metal plates, forming a grid of 24 squares. These industrial products, meant to support weight, now support assembled and torn photo transfers. The project uses the same title as a TMZ article describing the impact of the Internet on an isolated Amazonian tribe.

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Tanguy Morvan – We All Walk On Empty Staircases

by Tanguy Morvan

We All Walk On Empty Staircases reflects the deep scars of the artist's childhood traumas. Growing up in a violent and tormented environment left permanent marks on his mind. At the age of seven, he found refuge in the game World of Warcraft, where he immersed himself for sixteen years, creating an idealized version of himself. In recent years, his grandfather introduced him to the Masonic world, which deepened his fascination with rituals. For the past six months, he has been transforming his body through tattooing, a process that has allowed him to regain control over both his mind and body while staying connected to past memories. His project invites reflection on the impact of domestic violence and the healing power of rituals.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Isabella Madrid – Buena, Bonita, y Barata

by Isabella Madrid

As a Latin American woman, I have grown up with very specific expectations of the kind of woman I should be. In my project, I am reversing the codes that have been forced onto me and immersing myself in the different symbols of how Colombian women exist and have been represented through photographic self portraits. I am taking these symbols and subverting them, enacting them, letting them hold a weight on me, holding my own weight on them, playing with them, letting them define me and simultaneously redefining their power and meaning. I am showcasing not only the everlasting colonial violence Colombian female bodies have always been subjected to but simultaneously reappropriating the narrative around them, playing the muse, model, photographer, stylist, makeup artist, and art director.

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Florian Hilt – BSoD

by Florian Hilt

BSoD (Blue Screen of Death) is a series of stagnant views of a workstation emerging from the duality between fascination and fear of office spaces. Between boredom and anxiety, the desire for fantasy is transformed into a metaphorical quest for a moment's rest during a noisy, repetitive day. Time rushes by outside and stagnates inside, the mind wandering, piercing the corporate identity. Intrusive thoughts invade the workspace in the event of burnout. Attention is lost in a fantastic monotony. Press the alarm button, break the glass and let your senses drift away before returning to the chore. Silence and noise dissociate, reflecting the paradox of digital work where artist and tool must remain invisible to claim perfection.

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Riccardo Fasana – Cozy Threshold

by Riccardo Fasana

Cozy Threshold is a collection of digital photo collages which takes into exam spaces of transience within the domestic environment. In order to question the gaze which usually inhabits these interior spaces in the course of one’s everyday routine, the images included in the project present visible distortions which reveal the collage technique employed in their creation. As the layered nature of these digital reconstruction of actual spaces gradually unfolds in front of the viewer’s eyes, the gap between what is being observed and what might have been initially recognized becomes clearer. Through this work, viewers are therefore invited to reflect on the space in which these images exist by engaging in a detailed observation of the stage of everyday life.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Nina Pacherová – We Won't Tell Daddy!

by Nina Pacherová

We Won't Tell Daddy! takes a speculative look at the impact of sharenting - the phenomenon whereby parents excessively share their children's lives on social networks. In the form of a video installation, it explores the future consequences of the digital footprint that parents create for their children. It focuses on the TikTok #bathroomchallenge, where children are recorded cursing, and unaware of the future implications, their video is shared online. The project uses AI and deepfake technology to protect children's identities by replacing their faces with that of the author and highlights the abuse of content. At the same time, it encourages us to redefine the role of technology in our lives by using deepfake as a protective tool.

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Sunny Attias – Rotten Reverie

by Sunny Attias

Rotten Reverie is a series that wrestles with the seemingly random appearance of images and subjects in social media recommended content feeds through the use of personalised algorithms. As someone who often engages with recommended content and finds it both fascinating and sometimes worryingly accurate, I chose to closely analyse the recurring visual patterns and clusters of subjects, forms, and imagery that appear in my recommended content feed. These images serve as testimonies to a certain pattern of content, ephemeral in nature, that once floated in an ocean of visual recommendations. This project attempts to apply a human approach to a machinic logic, specifically addressing a phenomenon that appears to understand some of our thought processes better than we do.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Materialized Photography - Spring 2024

with Victoria Pidust

This course led by Victoria Pidust explored the creation and invention of visual languages for lens-based photographic objects and focused on the transformation of images into materialised forms. Students explored the practices of contemporary artists such as Katja Novitskova, Thomas Ruff, Seth Price and others and learnt how technologies such as CGI and photogrammetry have influenced artistic expression. The students explored the interplay between digital and physical spaces and developed unique approaches to creating photographic objects. The course focused on understanding historical and contemporary trends, analysing artists' case studies and creating materialised works, including single images, 3D objects, installations and immersive media such as AR and VR. Through research and practice, students conceptualised and materialised projects and presented their work as physical installations or objects. They developed the ability to articulate the meaning behind their creations, critique and collaborate with colleagues to expand their artistic practice.

PHOTOGRAPHY

self-Initiated Project - Spring 2024 - MAP1

with Bruno Ceschel

PHOTOGRAPHY

Applied Photography - Spring 2024

with David Luraschi

This course focused on location photography. Students were asked to step outside the studio into the real world and amplify what they discover. Each student did develop one or several bodies of work around the theme of water. The water was their studio. Taking account of what has been done in different mediums in the past (cinema, literature, theater, fashion) - students were encouraged to build a visual dynamic with a strong point of view. A big part of the course was motivated by the idea of finding elements (people, places, things) and turning them into a story. A central emphasis was on collaborating with people: models, actors, dancers, strangers and building their story with them. Casting and creating a growing dialog with their models, finding a common interest and expanding a playful territory to photograph was a recurring exercise.

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Automated Photography at Foto/Industria

with Milo Keller, Marco De Mutiis

The MAST Foundation is presenting the seventh edition of Foto/Industria, the world's first biennial event devoted to photography of industry and work, at a number of historic venues in Bologna and at MAST. The 12 exhibitions in Foto/Industria 2023 represent a chronology of points of view on the theme of PLAY, from the end of the 19th century to the present day. They offer an opportunity to observe and delve into the research of a selection of international artists. The ECAL is presenting an exhibition of its research project Automated Photography. An increasing number of images are produced autonomously by machines for machines with a gradual exclusion of any human intervention. Automated Photography is a research project developed by the Master Photography that addresses this situation by examining the technologies of image production and distribution such as: machine learning, CGI, photogrammetry.

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Workshop - Charlie Engman

with Charlie Engman, Milo Keller, Clément Lambelet

"Treatment, Synthesis, and Art Direction" Charlie Engman is an artist, photographer, writer, and art director based in Brooklyn, New York.He works across a range of media and disciplines from gen-AI art, photography, video, and fashion, and balances artistic, commercial, and pedagogical practices. He is the art director of the sustainable fashion brand, Collina Strada, where he is responsible for print design, branding, and runway show design. This workshop will investigate the ways in which media, aesthetics, and culture are interwoven and overlapping and are driven in large part by the accessibility of popular technology. It will also investigate the ways in which creativity is a collaborative and iterative process that bleeds across genre and category. There will be a key focus on the intersection of photography, AI tools, and videogaming / user-driven media.In this workshop, participants are expected to explore and challenge the ways they integrate and synthesize both professional and vernacular registers and new and traditional techniques. This will also serve as an introduction to developing art direction and making “ treatments ” for commissioned projects, and practical experience concepting and executing assignments that can bridge between a distinctive artistic practice and preexisting modes of making and sharing.

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Materialized Photography - Fall 2023 - MAP2

with Mazaccio & Drowilal

The purpose of this class is to examine the relationships between photography — in a context shaped by the digital — and its various modes of display. Students will have to consider what a photograph may be materially and explore how an image’s meaning is derived from both the mode of its distribution and the material form that it assumes. Although the final outcome has to include photography in a third dimensional way ( installation ), projects may use and combine image-based practices such as digital photography, collage, CGI, projection, printmaking, sculpture, objects, or performance, to encourage an expanded approach to photographic practice. The idea is to challenge the different types of engagement possible with pictures today.

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Self-Initiated Project - Fall 2023 - MAP2

with Elisa Medde

This module assists the students to develop a long term project - touching upon all stages from the idea to the final presentation. Students will have the opportunity to take some of the ideas and project from the previous semesters, in order to explore them further, or engage in brand new ones. The outcome of the project could take any form - from book to performance, from physical exhibition to digital presentations. A strong emphasis will be on the research/concept and the impact, experience of the outcome.

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Photobook - Fall 2023

with Bruno Ceschel

The module introduces students to the history of photobooks and artists’ books prompting them to study different strategies and approaches to contemporary book-making. That will lead to students individually working on a publication that will be presented at evaluations in January 2023. Students will have the opportunity to create a new body of work in relation to the book form, learning about editing, sequencing and designing.

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Applied Photography - Fall 2023

with Charles Negre

STILL LIFE PAPER - This course focuses on the ability to answer a commission within its own artistic practice and leading the students through a better understanding of studio photography, challenges of constructed images and their processes. This applied photography course has an emphasis on still life photography, our aim is to sharpen the students sensitivity to photographing and interpreting objects. For this semester, the group of students will develop their own printed magazine focusing on the practice of still life.

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Photobook - Fall 2023

with Bruno Ceschel

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Self-Initiated Project - Fall 2023 - MAP1

with Milo Keller

PHOTOGRAPHY

MAP Books 2023

with Bruno Ceschel

These publications are special editions produced within the framework of the Master in Photography at ECAL in 2023 for Bruno Ceschell's Photobook class. This curated selection was later showcased at Offprint during Paris Photo, providing a prestigious platform to exhibit and share the emerging talent in the field of photography.

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Automated - Fall 2023 - MAP2

with Marco De Mutiis

Artificial Photography looks at the recent and current developments in computational forms of image-making. The course focuses on the ways in which algorithmic imaging systems have been shaping the role of the photographer and the material and aesthetic properties of images, challenging the traditional understanding of photography. Through a series of lectures and workshops, Artificial Photography will specifically centre on so-called AI image generators and Text-to-Image software, addressing notions of truth and photographic manipulation, image labour and digital economies, agency and authorship, circulation and networked images, representational bias and discrimination, ownership and political imaginations.

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Aniket Godbole – A Place I Call Home

by Aniket Godbole

Growing up as an immigrant, my notion of “otherness” was profoundly connected with my idea of self – never fully Nigerian in Nigeria or Indian in India. This series explores my understanding of home as a third culture child, collating a narrative of my life that revisits memories of my youth through reimagined constructions of my everyday life. Settling in a new city never felt strange but with time a feeling of uncertainty lingered when I considered what I could actually call home. Featuring layered journal entries and subtracted and multiplied images from my archives, these collages tell a delicate story of a life in transit. I link up with a past that I have never fully experienced. Traditions, thoughts and realities guide a reflection on my childhood and how I experienced growing up in a strange new world that I now call home.

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Benjamin Freedman – Positive Illusions

by Benjamin Freedman

Positive Illusions is a photobook that depicts a series of childhood memories constructed using CGI. The resulting uncanny still lives, imagined from the perspective of a child, evoke a strange family presence in photo-realistic environments. Inspired by the nature of memory and simulation, I have based my scenes on what I could remember and used a phenomenological approach to fill in the blanks. Revisiting the past using CGI technology to re-stage events creates a unique flattening of the past and present – a process of pseudo visual archaeology. Some images in the series are repeated but with slight alterations, revealing the surrealist process of fabricating them and underscoring the phenomenon of distortion that is inherent to memory.

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Mirielle Alina Rohr – Girls Manufactured

Francesca Bergamini – Pretty in Pink

Jose Martin Martinez – L’Eternité Reste

Nabarun Gogoi – The Swan

Riccardo Androni – Exhaustion

Min Dai – Rate My Cake

Visvaldas Morkevicius – Ergot

Daniel Martinez – A River Has No Shore

Eva Manuela Rivas Bao – An Italian Story

Elisa Azevedo – Daydream

Doyoung Kim – Flattened Roughness

Eriko Miyata – Chronicle Void

Soft Photography

Contemporary Photography - Spring 2025 - MAP1

Self-Initiated Project - Spring 2025 - MAP1

Applied Photography - Spring 2025 - MAP1

Materialized Photography- Spring 2025 - MAP1

Workshop - Simon Lehner

We Do The Rest - PERFORMANCE WORKSHOP & EXHIBITION

Materialized Photography - Automn 2024

SELF-INITIATED PROJECT - Automn 2024 - MAP2

ECAL x AREA OF WORK - CO-EXISTENCE

Applied Photography - Fall 2024

Self-Initiated Project - Fall 2024 - MAP1

Photobook - Fall 2024

Fabienne Watzke – Lately I’ve been dreaming in pink and blue

Amélie Tricaud – Elle rêvait des loups

Tianyu Wang – Hiding and Seeking

Bor Cvetko – TRIBE’S STARLINK HOOKUP RESULTS IN PORN ADDICTION!!!

Tanguy Morvan – We All Walk On Empty Staircases

Isabella Madrid – Buena, Bonita, y Barata

Florian Hilt – BSoD

Riccardo Fasana – Cozy Threshold

Nina Pacherová – We Won't Tell Daddy!

Sunny Attias – Rotten Reverie

Materialized Photography - Spring 2024

self-Initiated Project - Spring 2024 - MAP1

Applied Photography - Spring 2024

Automated Photography at Foto/Industria

Workshop - Charlie Engman

Materialized Photography - Fall 2023 - MAP2

Self-Initiated Project - Fall 2023 - MAP2

Photobook - Fall 2023

Applied Photography - Fall 2023

Photobook - Fall 2023

Self-Initiated Project - Fall 2023 - MAP1

MAP Books 2023

Automated - Fall 2023 - MAP2

Aniket Godbole – A Place I Call Home

Benjamin Freedman – Positive Illusions