A New Gaze 4 - 2023
Process and Jury
A New Gaze 4 is dedicated to contemporary photography in Europe. Working with 50 nominators, we invited over 130 young artists from this region to submit a project proposal to respond to this year’s topic “Community”.
To ensure the nomination process encompasses a wide geographical reach and a multitude of photographic approaches, it is crucial for us to collaborate with experts from the local art scene. Their invaluable support played a significant role in achieving such diversity of perspectives for A New Gaze 4.
We would like to thank the following nominators for their time and expertise:
Adrian-Silvan Ionescu, Aleksandra Vajd, Andrei Liankevich, Anna Savitskaya, Anne Ruygt, Apostolos Zerdevas, Armin Smailovic, Barbara Čeferin, Bertan Selim, Boris Mikhailov, Brad Feuerhelm, Branislav Stepanek, Cemre Yesil, Christina Androulidaki, Claudia Küssel, Dag Alveng, Danaé Panchaud, David Campany, Dr. Roxana Trestioreanu, Dusan Kochol, Francesco Zanot, Greg Thomas, Heide Häusler, Helen Korpak, Hinde Haest, Irene de Mendoza, Iris Sikking, Jenny Nordquist, Jens Friis, Joachim Brohm, Joanna Gorlach, Jorge Ribalta, Julija Berkovica, Katrin Elvarsdottir, Lars Willumeit, Miha Colner, Milo Keller, Miroslav Karic, Nanna Hänninen, Nika Petković, Nikolas Ventourakis, Nina Strand, Olga Bubich, Olga Sviblova, Prof. Ulrike Lienbacher, Rein Deslé, Roberta Valtorta, Sergey Bratkov, Sergiy Lebedynskyy, Shoair Mavlian, Simona Vidmar, Stefan Becht & Josefine Raab, Stelios Kallinikou, Susanne Østby Sæther, Thomas Seelig, Trish Lambe and Nadine Wietlisbach
In May 2023, our jury examined a total of 68 project submissions during a meeting spanning two days. The jury consisted of the members of the Vontobel Art Commission, the president of Vontobel Art Commission Andreas Utermann, as well as Georgina Casparis (Head & Curator Art Vontobel) and Urs Stahel (advisor/curator) and two invited external jury members and experts in photography in Europe: Ann-Christin Bertrand (Switzerland) and Florian Ebner (France).
Left to right: Anna Konstantinova (Project Manager, Art Vontobel), Ann-Christin Bertrand (curator, author and lecturer in photography, Head of Programme BA Camera Arts at Lucerne University, guest expert and jury member), Urs Stahel (independent curator, author and lecturer, and external advisor to Art Vontobel, jury member), Georgina Casparis (Head & Curator Art Vontobel, jury member), Florian Ebner (Chief of Photography at Centre Pompidou, guest expert and jury member)
Florian Ebner, Head of the Photography Department at Centre Pompidou, Paris (Jury Member): "The selection of conceptual proposals by Augustin Lignier and Emidio Battipaglia will succeed in creating an exciting dialogue between two different worlds: the physical space of the city and the virtual space of artificial (and natural) intelligence beyond the human. With his project Wink Piece, Augustin Lignier simultaneously takes up the programmatic performances of the 1970s and expands the old genre of street photography, in which he finds a subtle and playful analogy in urban space for our practice of “likes” that has become commonplace. With his experimental approach, Emidio Battipaglia attempts to juxtapose two seemingly unrelated worlds in his work Synaptic Dialogues: the organic information of plants and the structures of artificial, neuronal networks. The Italian artist’s experimental arrangement, which has yet to be developed, will also be read as an invitation to understand organic perception beyond the human, as a New Gaze on our physical and virtual reality."
Ann-Christin Bertrand
Ann-Christin Bertrand is a curator, author, and lecturer in photography. In her work to date, she combines her practical-institutional experience with theoretical discourse, whereby the profound transition of photography since digitalisation and with questions about the future of the medium play a central role. Previously, Bertrand was a curator at the C/O Berlin Foundation for almost ten years, as well as a lecturer in the master's programme in photography at ECAL, University of Arts and Design Lausanne, where she was involved in the two research projects "Augmented Photography" and "Automated Photography", among others. Today she heads the of Programme BA Camera Arts at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.
Florian Ebner
Internationally renowned in the field of photography, Florian Ebner is an art historian and photographer, curator and author, currently heading the photography collection at the Centre Pompidou in Paris since 2017. Previously, Ebner was responsible for the photography collection at the Museum Folkwang, Essen, for many years, was director of the Museum für Photographie Braunschweig. Among other things, Ebner curated the German Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale and has published numerous publications on modern and contemporary photography.