Portfolio Review 2017 – Reviewer’s Profile

María García Yelo (Madrid, Spain, 1977) is the Director of PHotoEspaña, International festival of photography and visual arts. With a degree in Art History from the Universidad Complutense in Madrid, García Yelo was the Director of the Post-War and Contemporary Art department at the British auction house Christie’s, in Spain, from 2008 until 2013. She was previously the General Deputy Director of Conservation and Research at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (2005-2008) and Assistant Director of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Esteban Vicente in Segovia (2002-2004). She has served as an independent curator and as an art critic for ABC Cultural, having published various essays and articles on modern and contemporary art. María García Yelo is the Artistic Advisor of the 2017 edition of the Prix HSBC pour la Photographie.

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An Art Critic and a Curator, Pascal Beausse is currently the Head of Photographic Collections at the Centre National des Arts Plastiques (CNAP) in Paris.
He contributed to magazines and art journals such as Art Press, Critique d’art and Flash Art. He has published essays, articles, interviews and catalogues on the work of Maria Thereza Alves, Jimmie Durham, Teresa Margolles, Allan Sekula, Bruno Serralongue, Cécile Hartmann and Wang Du, among others.
Recent exhibitions curated by Pascal Beausse include Y he aquí la luz (Museo de Arte del Banco de la República, Bogotá, 2017), The Family of the Invisibles (Seoul Museum of Art, 2016), Eriko Koga – Tryadhvan (Kyotographie, 2016), Supernature (Kyotographie, 2014), Knowledge is Power (PhotoEspaña, Madrid, 2013), The Secret Sea (Onomichi City Museum of Art, 2013), Numero Tres (La Virreina – centre de la imatge, Barcelona, 2012), Documents pour une information alternative (Rencontres d’Arles, 2012), among others. Pascal Beausse was a resident at Villa Kujoyama in 2007.

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François Cheval was born in 1954 and has a background in history and ethnology. He has served as a museum curator since 1982, initially in the Jura and the Réunion before being named director of the muse Nicéphore Niépce in Chalon-sur-Saône in 1996. Cheval strives to rid photography of its old presumptions and to resent photographic originality through new forms of museology and revitalized discourse. Most significantly, he has both curated noteworthy retrospectives of photographers such as Denis Roche, John Batho, Gérard Collin-Thiébaut, Peter Knapp, Mac Adams, and Raoul Coutard, and has been a resolute champion of emerging photographers such as Elina Brotherus, JH Engström, Claire Chevrier, Antoine d’Agata, Charles Fréger, and Raphaël Dallaporta.

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From 1977 to 1984 William Ewing was Director of Exhibitions at the International Center of Photography, New York, and from 1996 to 2010 Director of the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, while also teaching at the University of Geneva. He has served on many juries over the years, and shown at a number of international photography festivals, as well as co-curating the New York Photo Festival in 2009. Since 2010 he has worked as a curator for the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, Minneapolis and Lausanne, and since 2015, for the Foundation Carène, Switzerland. He is also currently Director of Curatorial Projects for Thames & Hudson, London.

Since the late 1970s Ewing’s exhibitions have been shown at many major museums in America and Europe, including: the Museum of Modern Art and ICP, New York; the Jeu de Paume and the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Hayward, Barbican and Serpentine Galleries, London; the Kunsthaus Zürich; the Folkwang Museum, Essen; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo; the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; and the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Ewing’s books include monographs on George Hoyningen-Huene, Erwin Blumenfeld, Dan Weiner, Ray Metzker, Leonard Freed and Arnold Newman, while his thematic books include Out of Focus, for the Saatchi Gallery, Lasting Impressions for Steidl, Flora Photographica, The Body, The Face: The New Photographic Portraiture; The Century of the Body, Landmark: The Fields of Landscape Photography, all for Thames & Hudson. His most recent book is Edward Burtynsky: Essential Elements, while William Wegman: Being Human will be published in 2017.

In 2010 Ewing was awarded the status of Officer in the French Order of Arts and Letters, and in 2016 won the Outstanding Service to Photography Award from the Royal Photographic Society. He lives and works in Lausanne and London.

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Graduate of the famous Arles Photo School (ENSP) in 1985, Éric Karsenty joined the team of « Le mois de la Photo à Paris », then he joined the agency of photographers Editing in 1989. He was always Interested by the photographic press. His training as editor in 2008, led him to work with Images magazine such as the magazine Zmâla, l’œil curieux before joining Fisheye magazine as editor-in-chief in 2014.

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Wei-I Lee, born in 1982 in Taipei, Taiwan. Lee was formerly a reporter at United Daily News and founded Voices of Photography magazine in 2011 where he assumed the post of editor-in-chief. He ever clinched the best magazine chief editor and best design titles in the most acclaimed award in Taiwan’s publishing industry, the Golden Tripod Award. Lee’s most recent curation projects include “Marginal Island” (Jimei Arles International Photo Festival, 2016) and “Street of Remnants” (Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 2014).

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Eric Pillault is creative director based in Paris, France. He worked as a freelance graphic designer and DA in numerous magazines. He started to work with Terry Richardson, Nathaniel Goldberg, Mark Borthwick, for the magazine “”20 ans”” in 1996. In 2003, he set the tone of the monthly magazine “”Jalouse””, which was a creative platform for many photographers, including Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Araki Nobuyoshi, Duane Michals and Homma Takashi.
In 2011, he successfully launched M le magazine du Monde with Marie-Pierre Lannelongue. Neither an infotainment nor a woman magazine, M is mixing the best of information and style. The magazine has won many awards since its launch, captivating readers and advertisers by collaborating weekly with leading photographers such as Juergen Teller, Paolo Roversi, Peter Lindbergh, Mario Sorrenti, Alasdair McLellan, and Bruce Weber …
As an multidisciplinary artist, Eric regularly conceives special edition artists books. Eric also runs the Funnybones studio, which is involved in many visual identity projects, design and brand consultancy – in the fields of contemporary art, fashion, luxury and culture.

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Sujong Song is a Seoul-based curator and writer who is active in all aspects of photography, ranging from publication to exhibition and event planning. Until 2014, she had been on the steering committee for the Daegu Photo Biennale, and was the director of its portfolio review section. She is currently on the planning committee of Korea Photograher’s Fellowship hosted by Sangsang Madang, an influential cultural branch of KT&G. Song also has experience in broadcasting, having helped to create shows for the national broadcasting network, KBS, and the English-language Arirang TV.
Song served on the committees for the Angkor Photo Festival and the World Health Organization’s Stop TB Photo Award. She has organized and curated many exhibitions: the 2012 Mario Giacomelli exhibition at the Museum of Photography, Seoul; Five Views from Korea at the Noorderlicht Gallery in 2014; Two Moons at the GoEun Museum of Photography in 2015; and the Map of Daily Life at the Art Museum of Lishui in 2015, to name a few.
She has judged on panels for World Press Photo, POYi, and Flash Forward among many other photography awards and also nominates for several awards including Prix Pictet and Joop Swart Masterclass. Having been editor-in-chief of GEO-Korea, Song now regularly writes for the photography column of the daily, Kyunghyang Shinmun.
She is most interested in reviewing bodies of work with an individual and articulate point of view while tackling contemporary issues. She is not interested in commercial photography. Through portfolio reviews, Ms. Song intends to find artists to collaborate with in various exhibitions. She is also able to promote artists and their work for awards and/or workshop consideration along with opportunities for exhibitions.

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Stefano Stoll (born in Zurich in 1974) is the director of Festival Images Vevey, Switzerland, a biennial of visual arts that specialises in tailor-made outdoor monumental installations. Every two years, it offers photographic projects in the streets and parks as well as in the town’s museums and galleries. He also manages an ‘off-space’ dedicated to contemporary photography (Espace Images Vevey) and is involved in the award of one of the oldest photography grants in Europe, the Grand Prix Images Vevey. During his studies in art history and economics, Stoll founded and co-directed Switzerland’s first photography festival, the Biel Festival of Photography. He was also in charge of cultural affairs for the city of Vevey from 2004 to 2015 and the creator of PictoBello, an event dedicated to giant drawings in urban spaces. As an author, he is a member of AICA Press and writes on topics such as cultural policy, art and photography.

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In the early 1990s, she started to organize her first exhibitions in her private apartment in Zurich, and successively presented the works of photographers like René Burri, Werner Bischof, Michael von Graffenried. She then created a small sized collection of photographic monographs called “Fotofolie”, published by Benteli in Bern. 

Esther Woerdehoff settled permanently in Paris in 1991, first as a correspondent for art magazines, then as an exhibition curator.

She opened her Galerie Esther Woerdehoff in 1996, in the fifteenth arrondissement of Paris, 36 rue Falguière, in a former factory building which later became a small museum. Remarkable for its timbered structure, it is a superb example of architecture of the Montparnasse neighborhood, deeply connected to the artistic world ever since.

The transformation of this space into an art gallery, dedicated to modern and contemporary photography, fits perfectly with the artistic neighborhood, surrounded by the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art and the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation.

The artistic direction of the gallery is open to different visions of photography: modern and contemporary, vintages and digital. It goes from the old to the new world and switches between different cultures, with the strong focus on demonstrating the links between the images through time and space and to break down the barriers between generations, identities and cultures of photography.

In the beginning more devoted to historical photography, the gallery progressively enlarged its horizons towards photographers using photography as a support for new possibilities offered by the digital technologies, by painting, multimedias and sculptures.

Aside from the regular exhibitions within its walls, the gallery has also been active in major contemporary art fairs in Europe and the US through its collaboration with museums and institutions, and the publication of the artists it represents.

Recently, Esther Woerdehoff acquired the estate of the famous Swiss photographer, Karlheinz Weinberger (1921-2006), which she promotes through exhibitions, publications worldwide. 

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Dedicated in curatorship, spreading and promotion of China’s contemporary photography and management of art projects. Nominator for The Hasselblad Award in Photography and Prix Pictet, and the author of Ten Years of Contemporary Photography in China 2005-2014.

2001 to 2003, taking a 3-year Chinese Master Course as a member chosen by World Press Photo; 2005, initiator and curator of Lianzhou Foto as artistic director and has been chosen as Top Ten Character of China Photography of the Year 2005; November, 2006, invited judge for FOTOBILD, Berlin, Germany; January, 2007, invited curator for Chinese Work in Paris Photo Biennale; 2007, member of review panel for Rhubarb-Rhubarb, Birmingham, UK; 2007, member of review panel for FOTOBILD, Berlin, Germany; April 2008, member of jury of the 1st Salonika Photo Biennale 2008, Greece. May 2008, Reviewer for FOTOBILD Berlin. May 2009, Reviewer for China Photography Awards; Sep 2009 & Sep 2010, Judger for Southern Pocket Film Festival. June 2010 Viewer for 50JPG, Geneva; July 2010, Jury for Photography Talent Award, France. Nominator of 2011 Prix Pictet Photography Prize; Curator of 2012 Moscow Photo Biennale; Nominator for the Hasselblad Award 2012; Reviewer for European New Photography Forum 2014; Reviewer for Houston Photography Biennial 2014; Reviewer for the Festival of Light Argentina 2014; Reviewer for Young Art Taipei 2015, Taiwan; Reviewer for Houston Photography Biennial 2016; Curator for Kyotographie 2016; Curator for Photo Biennale Denmark “Cities and Memory” exhibition, 2016.

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Born in Osaka.
Owner and director of The Third Gallery Aya since 1996.
Director of the Fine Art Photography Association.
Director of Takarazuka Madia Library.
Deals primarily with photography and contemporary art.
Among the artists she has presented at her gallery are Ishiuchi Miyako, Jo Spence, Gocho Shigeo, Yamazawa Eiko, Toshiko Okanoue, Akasaki Mima, Abe Jun, Asada Nobuo, Kakimoto Hiromi, Watanabe Koichi, Tada Yuko, and Mitamura Akira.
In 1997, produced a video titled “6 Works and 6 Artists – Being an Artist/Photographer,” a collection of interviews with six female photographers: Akioka Miho, Ishiuchi Miyako, Kodama Fusako, Nagahra Yuri, Matsuo Hiroko and Matsumoto Michiko.
Served as supervising editor of the photography magazine “SHABA SHABA.”
Curated a group exhibition titled “Comical & Cynical – Contemporary Photography of Korea and Japan” in 2007 and traveling to Korea in 2008.
http://www.thethirdgalleryaya.com/

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Goto is a freelance photography consultant based in Asia. Her work field is a comprehensive consultant related to photography including producing, curation, photo-editing, and research. Her main themes are war, contemporary social issues, human rights, women’s rights, and so on. Past works of hers include campaingns and publications with photographs for NGOs, humanitarian aid, and human rights groups, nominations, curations, and productions of international awards, and photography festivals.

Iizawa is a photography critic born in Miyagi in 1954. In 1977, he graduated from Department of Photography, Collage of Art, Nihon University,Tokyo. In 1984, he finished his doctorate in Department of Fine Arts from Tsukuba University, Ibaraki. His mejor writings include: Shashin bijutsukan e yokoso [Welcome to Photo Museum] (Kodansha, 1996), Dejigurafi: Dejitaru wa Shashin o Korosuka? (Chuokoronsha, 2004), Shashinteki Shikou (Kawade Books, 2009), Onnanoko Shashin no Jidai (NTT Publishing, 2010), Kinoko Bungaku Meisakusen (MinatoNoHito, 2010), Fukayomi: Nihon Shasin no Chomeisaku 100 (Pie International, 2012), and Gendai Nihon Shasin Archive 2011-2013 (Seikyusha, 2015).

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Takayuki Ishii was born in 1963 and moved to the United States in 1982. After studying painting at the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, Ishii began his career in the U.S as an art dealer. Upon returning to Japan in 1994, Ishii established Taka Ishii Gallery in Otsuka, Tokyo (the gallery is currently located in Roppongi). Over the past 20 years Taka Ishii Gallery has held exhibitions with Japan’s leading photographers including Nobuyoshi Araki, Daido Moriyama, Naoya Hatakeyama; painters such as Nobuya Hoki, Naoto Kawahara, Kyoko Murase, and Hiroe Saeki, and has further introduced the works of up and coming Japanese artists: Ei Arakawa, Yuki Kimura, Yukinori Maeda, and Kei Takemura. In addition to organizing exhibitions in Japan, Ishii quickly expanded his activities to the global art scene. Through regular participation in international art fairs such as Art Basel and Frieze Art Fair, Ishii has contributed to increasing the global recognition of the Japanese artists he represents. At the same time, he serves to actively introduce the currents of contemporary art in Europe and the United States to the Japanese audience through exhibitions with highly acclaimed international artists such as Thomas Demand, Dan Graham, Sterling Ruby, and Cerith Wyn Evans as well as the works of aspiring young artists like Luke Fowler and Mario Garcia Torres. Ishii is also involved in the publication of exhibition catalogs and artist’s books.
In February 2011, Ishii established Taka Ishii Gallery Photography / Film in Roppongi, Tokyo, as a gallery that specializes in photography. The gallery showcases the works of Japan’s prewar and postwar generation of photographers including VIVO members such as Eikoh Hosoe, Shomei Tomatsu, and Ikko Narahara; Minoru Hirata whom documented the activities of avant-garde artists of the 1960s, and works by Kiyoji Otsuji from Jikken Kobo (Experimental Workshop). Furthermore, the gallery introduces works by young photographers such as Erika Yoshino, Tomoki Imai, Nao Tsuda, and Ayaka Yamamoto. March 2015 marked the opening of Taka Ishii Gallery New York in the city’s Upper East Side.
In May 2014, Ishii established the Fine-Art Photography Association (FAPA) as a means to further develop the unique and rich context of Japan’s photography community. The Association comprising of supporting galleries, publishers, and booksellers, launched the Hillside Terrace Photo Fair in Daikanyama, Tokyo, in September 2014. In addition to nurturing the growth of Japan’s currently developing photography market, the association continues to plan a variety of measures with the aim to further promote and disseminate practices in Fine-Art photography and film culture.

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Taka Kawachi has extensive international experience, having graduated from the Academy of Art University of San Francisco, to then working in New York City as a book editor and curator for 15 years. Returning to Japan in 2011, he held the position of Director for the Amana Photo Collection, overseeing the development of the company’s acquisitions of more than 550 Japanese photographic works in four years. In 2016, Kawachi published his first book Art no Iriguchi (Entrance to the Arts, on American Art) followed by his second publication on European Art released in the fall of the same year. His publications illustrate his experiences of art and photography and offers readers an opportunity to engage with the history and subjects of both regions from his unique point of view. He is currenlty the Director of the Overseas Division of Kyoto’s Benrido, working to disseminate the classic and rare photographic process of Collotype.

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Mika Kobayashi is a photo critic and curator who writes for magazines and websites, and has taught at schools and institutions in both Japan and overseas. From 2007 to 2008, she resided in the United States as a grantee of the Asian Cultural Council and Patterson Fellowship, and worked on exhibitions and research to introduce Japanese photography at the International Center of Photography in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She has been a guest researcher at the Museum of Modern Art since 2010, and a part-time lecturer at Tokyo Polytechnic University since 2014.

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Yusuke Nakajima opened his bookstore “POST” in 2011 where he renewes the whole line up of books by publishers regularly. Additionally, one of the sections in Ebisu store permanently shows main line-ups by Steidl, Germany. Currently, as the director of the store he selects books, organises exhibitions, publishs, and coordination of bookshelves at Dover Street Market, Tokyo. Since 2015, he has been the director of The Tokyo Art Book Fair and in 2016 founded a dummybook award “Steidl Book Award Japan” in collaboration with Steidl.

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Mutsuko Ota is Editorial Director of IMA magazine. born in Tokyo, 1968. She started her career as an editor at Marie Claire and worked at several men’s magazines such as Esquire, GQ and others as feature editor on travel, gastronomy, culture, art and photography among other areas. Along with collaborating with several magazines as a freelance editor, she also became involved in various fields including art projects, book and catalogue editing, and film promotion throughout her career. She became the editorial director of IMA magazine in January 2012.In 2004 she produced real space called IMA CONCEPT STORE in Tokyo for art photography popularization in Japan.

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Mariko Takeuchi is a photography critic, independent curator and associate professor of Kyoto University of Art and Design. Prior to this, she was also visiting researcher of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. Takeuchi was also guest curator for the Spotlight on Japan of Paris Photo 2008, and received a Fulbright Grant for her research in the US. In 2016 she was curator of Japan section at Dubai Photo Exhibition. Takeuchi is based in Kyoto, Japan, and has a M.A. in Arts from Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan. Takeuchi has been responsible for various photography projects, including the Japanese edition of the book and touring exhibition Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape by Jonathan Torgovnik. Besides her regular articles on newspapers, Takeuchi has contributed to Ryudai Takano’s 1993-1996, Lieko Shiga’s notebook|Rasen Kaigan, Osamu James Nakagawa’s Gama Caves, and Takashi Arai’s Monuments, among many other catalogues, books and magazines.

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Lucille Reyboz :
Photographer. Born in 1973, Lucille Reyboz spent an important part of her childhood in Africa where she began her journey with photography. In 1999, she discovered Japan while participating in Sakamoto Ryuichi’s opera Life. First and foremost a portrait photographer, Reyboz produced numerous record covers for such labels as Blue Note and Verve. She has extensively exhibited her work all over the world, notably in Visa pour l’image (2001), Phillips de Pury in New York (2007), HSBC on the Champs-Elysées during Paris Photo (2008), CHANEL NEXUS HALL, Tokyo (2011). She has also published several books including, Batammaba Bâtisseurs d’univers, by Gallimard, Source, Belles de Bamako and Impressions du Japon by Editions de la Martinière created in collaboration with Keiichiro Hirano. Reyboz continues to be fascinated and inspired by Japan and Shinto rituals, she now lives and works in Kyoto where she created KYOTOGRAPHIE International Photography Festival with Yusuke Nakanishi in 2013.

Yusuke Nakanishi:
Born in 1968, Yusuke Nakanishi is a lighting artist who travels the world, and expresses his impressions of light and shadow from his memories. He has worked as a lighting director for feature films, stages, music concerts, fashion shows and Interior designs. He also created the Eatable Lights object series, and has exhibited installations at the Hara Museum, the School Gallery Paris, and Nuits Blanche Kyoto. He has founded KYOTOGRAPHIE International Photography Festival with Lucille Reyboz from 2013.

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