Nadim Asfar was born in 1976 in Beirut, were he still lives and works. He received a BA in Cinema Studies from the Academie Libanaise des Beax Arts and 2001 and completed a masters in Photography in 2003 at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure Louis Lumière in Paris. Nadim Asfar's work has been shown in several group exhibitions such as Présence that toured to the Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris and Centro de Arte Contemporaneo in Sevilla among other venues between 2006 and 2007. He was included in the collective exhibition of Lebanese artists, 'All about Beirut', organized by Galerie Tanit and White Box Kunsthalle in Munich.

Nadim Asfar makes videos, among which the short movie Print (1) was presented at several festivals including the Cinemaeast Film Festival at the Independent Film Center in New York. His video, 'Everyday Madonna' was selected to be in international competition at the Festival International du Documentaire, Marseille and at the Curtacinema Film Festival in Rio de Janeiro. Nadim Asfar is represented by Tanit Galerie in Munich.

Mirthe Berentsen is a Dutch, Berlin-based writer and critic. She contributes to several magazines and newspapers, such as de Groene Amsterdammer, VPRO, NRC Handelsblad, Mister Motley and Kunstbeeld, as well as to individual artist's publications and projects. She is currently working on her neverending book and a research project at the Freie Universitat Berlin and the Universiteit van Amsterdam in which she researches the imagology of nationalities in translated literature.

Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin have collaborated for over a decade during which time they have exhibited widely and have produced six monographs which all test the limits of documentary photography: Trust, Ghetto, Mr Mkhize's Portrait, Chicago, Fig and The Red House. Their next book, So This Is Life, a collaboration with the writer John Berger, is published in the spring of 2010. Their latest project Afterlife, is an investigation and a de-construction of an iconic image taken in 1979 that came to define a moment in both Iranian and photographic history.

Dr. Jörg M. Colberg was born in Germany in 1968. He studied physics/astrophysics at the universities of Bonn and Munich and moved to the US in early 2000. Jörg is the editor of the blog 'Conscientious', one of the most widely read and popular blogs dedicated to contemporary fine-art photography. He is a faculty member of the international low-residency MFA program at the University of Hartford, Art School; he has organized successful gallery shows (most recently 'Bare' at Michael Mazzeo Gallery), and he has been writing for photography magazines nationally and internationally.

Constant Dullaart born in 1979 in the Netherlands, is a Berlin-based artist/curator who works primarily on and with the world wide web. During his residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam he curated several events in the surrounding city, such as the periodically held Lost and Found evenings (with his final event in the New Museum, NYC), Contemporary Semantics Beta in Arti et Amicitiae, and Versions in NIMk (Netherlands Media Art Institute). His work is shown internationally in places such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Art in General and MWNM galleries in New York, the ICA in London, and NIMk, de Appel, W139, the Stedelijk Museum, Ellen de Bruijne projects, and Gallery West in the Netherlands. Dullaart lives/works in Berlin and Amsterdam.

Lidewij Edelkoort (b.1950, The Netherlands) studied fashion and design at the School of Fine Arts in Arnhem, and upon graduation became a trend forecaster at the leading Dutch department store, De Bijenkorf. There she discovered her talent for sensing upcoming trends and her unique ability to predict what consumers would want to buy several seasons ahead of time. This brought her to Paris in 1975, working first as an independent trend consultant and soon creating Trend Union. Li has received continual recognition for her work in providing inspirational stimulus and fostering creative talent. In 2003, TIME magazine named her as one of the world's 25 most influential people in fashion.

Joan Fontcuberta (b. 1955, Barcelona) has had his work exhibited globally, amongst others in the MoMA in New York and the Art Institute in Chicago. He is also the founder and editor of the magazine PhotoVision and he has written several books about the history, aesthetics and education of photography. Publications containing his photographs are The Artist and the Photograph (2000), Twilight Zones (2000) and Sputnik (1997). Fontcuberta is represented by Zabriskie Gallery in New York, Galerie Nathalie Pariente in Paris, and Galeria Senda in Madrid.

Melinda Gibson was born 1985 in Aldershot, UK and currently lives and works in London. She studied for a BA in Photography at the London College of Communication and has plans to complete an MA in the next few years. After graduating Melinda Gibson assisted various photographers, notably Martin Parr and Wolfgang Tillmans, while still continuing to develop her photographic practice. Melinda Gibson has exhibited in London and will be participating in the European Capital of Culture exhibitions in Finland 2011. The Magenta Foundation has selected Melinda as one of the UK winners for this years Flash Forward Emerging photographers award. In The Photograph as Contemporary Art Melinda Gibson is interested in the changing perspectives of the photographic medium, itís positioning within contemporary art and the help and hindrances brought about through the technological advances in photography.

Rose Issa is a curator, writer and producer who has championed visual art and film from the Arab world and Iran for nearly 30 years. She has lived in Iran, Lebanon, France and, for the last 25 years, London, where from her private project space in Kensington she showcases upcoming and established artists, and produces exhibitions and publications with public and private institutions worldwide.

Anne-Celine Jaeger is a British based journalist and critic. Most recently she wrote Image Makers, Image Takers: The Essential Guide to Photography by Those in the Know (Thames & Hudson, 2007), a collection of interviews with some of the world's most established photographers as well as other professionals from the world of photography. She has written for many publications, including The Guardian, The London Sunday Times, Foam Magazine and Wallpaper* as well as Süddeutsche Zeitung and Du magazine.

Erik Kessels (b.1966, Roermond) is a founding partner and creative director of KesselsKramer, an independent, international communications agency based in Amsterdam. He has curated photography exhibitions at Les Rencontres d'Arles Photographie, France, and most recently at the New York Photo Festival. As a passionate photo collector he has published several books (the Almost in Every Picture series) and has been one of the editors of the alternative photography magazine, Useful Photography.

Timo Klos was born in 1983 in Bad Hersfeld in Germany. He started his photography studies at the University of Art and Design in Offenbach am Main, and moved to Helsinki in 2008 for an exchange year at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts. He plans to graduate next autumn.

Benjamin Lowy was born in 1979. He received a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis in 2002 and began his career covering the Iraq War in 2003 for Time Magazine. Since then he has covered major stories in Afghanistan, Darfur, Chad, Haiti, Indonesia and China. In 2004 Lowy attended the World Press Joop Swart Masterclass and was nominated for the ICP Infinity Award. He was named in the Photo District News 30 and his images of Iraq were chosen by PDN as some of the most iconic of the 21st century. Lowy has received awards from World Press Photo, POYi, PDN, PGB, Communication Arts, American Photography, and was a finalist for the Oskar Barnack Award. He most recently won Duke University's First Book Prize. Lowy's work from Iraq and Darfur has been part of several gallery and museum shows, including at London's Tate Modern, and the San Francisco MoMA.

Benjamin Lowy is represented by Reportage by Getty Images.

Flora Lysen is an independent writer, curator and researcher who graduated from the history of art MA program at Leiden University.  She was a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley and subsequently worked at performance art platform If I Cant' Dance... in Amsterdam and contemporary art space BAK, basis voor actuele kunst in Utrecht. In 2010, she was the curator of The Smooth and the Striated, an exhibition in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam, showing work of eight contemporary artists.

Ann Marsh is Director of the Art Theory programme at Monash University in Australia. As well as being a Fine Art graduate from Adelaide College of the Arts, she has a masters from Monash and a Phd from Melbourne University. Her research ares include photography, performance art, feminism, postmodernism and psychoanalysis. She has written several books and has been a contributing editor to Eyeline, Contemporary Visual Arts, since 1998.

Lesley A. Martin is Publisher of the book-publishing program at the Aperture Foundation, where she has worked on-and-off since 1995. In between stints at Aperture, she served as senior editor and production director of Umbrage Editions. Her writing on photography has been published in Aperture, American Photo, and DoubleTake, among other publications and she has edited over fifty books of photography, including Reflex: A Vik Muniz Primer; An-My Lê: Small Wars; My Life in Politics: Tim Davis; Istanbul: City of a Hundred Names by Alex Webb; Richard Misrach: On the Beach; Beate Gütschow: LS/S; Paris o New York o Shanghai by Hans Eijkelboom.

Katja Mater graduated from the Free Media department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam in 2003, and subsequently attended the artist institute 'The Ateliers,' from 2003 - 2005. In 2006 Mater attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (Maine, USA ) and in 2009 she was a fellow at the MacDowell Colony (New Hampshire, USA). Presently she is an artist in resident at The Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. Her work has been exhibited throughout Europe and the US, with shows at the Gagosian Gallery during the 4th Berlin Biennial in Berlin (2006), at the Stedelijk Museum Bureau in Amsterdam (2007), her solo 'Principle Matter' at V&A Gallery, New York (2008), FOAM - Photography Museum in Amsterdam and the Dutch Photography Museum in Rotterdam (2009). End of 2010 her solo exhibition 'Density Drawings' opened at Gallery Martin van Zomeren in Amsterdam. In 2009, 'A Study on Colour', Mater's artist book was published by Heden, The Hague The Netherlands.

Nicholas Mirzoeff (b.)  is Professor of Media Culture and Communication at New York University. His publications and projects contributed fundamentally to the general development of Visual Culture as a field of study and a methodology. He wrote and edited An Introduction to Visual Culture (2nd ed. 2009) and The Visual Culture Reader (3rd ed. forthcoming 2012), both being standard books for academic research into our image-dominated culture.

Sean O'Toole is a culture journalist, art critic and writer. A PhD candidate at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, he formerly served as editor of the magazine Art South Africa (2004-10), writes regularly on photography for the Sunday Times and contributes a bi-monthly art column to frieze magazine.

Lisa Oppenheim (1975) lives and works in New York City.  Her films and photographs have recently been exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and Bilbao, the New Museum, and at the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, as well as in many gallery exhibitions throughout the US and Europe. Recent solo exhibitions include Blood to Ghosts at Galerie Juliette Jongma and Klosterfelde and Invention without a Future and Harris Lieberman.  She is represented by Galerie Juliette Jongma in Amsterdam, Harris Lieberman, New York and Klosterfelde in Berlin. Upcoming exhibitions include a solo presentation in the Art Statements section of Art Basel with Juliette Jongma.

Sarah Palmer has an MFA in Photography, Video and Related Media from School of Visual Arts and a BA in English and Italian from Vassar College. Her work has been exhibited at the Center for Photography at Woodstock, the Irish Museum of Contemporary Art, Like the Spice Gallery, and various other galleries and pop-up spaces, and has been published in both print and online journals. Her first solo exhibition was held at the Wild Project in New York City in Spring 2010. She is currently full-time faculty in the Photography program at Parsons, The New School for Design.

Asmara Pelupessy (US/NL) is an independent curator, researcher, writer, editor & project organizer in photography & visual culture. Together with Sara Blokland (NL) she is the co-founder of UNFIXED Projects (www.unfixedprojects.org), a nonprofit organization aimed at creating platforms for dialogue between photography, contemporary art & theory, developing & producing projects with a strong focus on cultural identity.

Laurel Ptak is an independent curator based in New York City whose interest in contemporary art veers towards image-based practices, socially engaged work, and network culture. Her URLs include:

Let's Meet in Real Life

We Have the Technology.org

Image Futures

Moira Ricci (Italy, 1977) studied photography at the Brera Academy and the Bauer School of Photography in Milan. She is working in the field of photography and video, and by basing her works on her own experiences and emotions her themes of family relationships and identity are often universal.  In 2000 she was awarded the first Riccardo Pezza prize, organized by the Museo della Fotografia Contemporanea (Milan). She has participated in several group exhibitions since 2001, VideoRom 2.0, Milan, The Rising Generation in 2003, Visioni Dall'Interno in 2004 and Photocells in the Italian Cultural Institute in London, 2005. In 2006 she had a solo show at Artopia in Milan entitled Interfruit. In 2008 Ricci has participated in a number of international group exhibitions: Talent Latent, Scan Photography Festival in Los Angeles, A Snake on a Tree and Location 1, both in New York. She is now busy with a new project: a musical about her difficulties in coming to terms with adult life. Moira Ricci lives and works in Milan and Grosseto.

Ilse van Rijn is a Dutch writer and art critic. She contributes to magazines, like /Metropolis M/, /Open/, /Mister Motley/ and /Foam Magazine/, as well as to individual artist's publications and curatorial projects. She is currently working on her PhD, in which she researches the status of 'artist's writings'. Ilse teaches at the Gerrit Rietveldacademie, Amsterdam.

Fred Ritchin (b.) is Professor of Photography & Imaging at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. His book After Photography (New York: W. W. Norton & Company) was published in 2008 and his blog is afterphotography.org. In Our Own Image: The Coming Revolution in Photography (New York: Aperture, 1990) has just been relaunched in a twentieth anniversary edition by Aperture.

Thomas Ruff (b. 1958, Zell am Harmersbach) is an internationally renowned German photographer who lives and works in Dusseldorf. Having studied photography from 1977 to 1985 with Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf, he developed his method of conceptual serial photography. He is one of the most influential photographers of our time.

Aaron Schuman (b. 1977, Northampton) is an American photographer, editor, writer and curator based in the United Kingdom. He exhibits his own photographic work internationally, has curated a number of exhibitions including 'Whatever Was Splendid: New American Photographs' for the 2010 FotoFest Biennial, and regularly contributes photography, articles, essays and interviews to many publications.  Schuman is also a Senior Lecturer at the Arts University College at Bournemouth and the University of Brighton, and is the founder and editor of the online photography journal, SeeSaw Magazine.

http://www.seesawmagazine.com/

Anika Schwarzlose was born 1982 in Berlin, Germany. She received a BA from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam in 2009. After graduating from the photography department of the academy, she was granted the startstipendium by the Fonds BKVB. At the moment she works in Sweden and Amsterdam and has recently started a MFA study at the Konsthögskolan i Malmö. Her practice revolves around the structures, methods and devices we invent to organize the world around us. Often engaging photographic principles like processes of image creation and mediation not only as means but as subject to her work. Much of her work is fueled by the need to make complex and potentially frightening technology accessible, enabling her to retrace the process of it's invention. She has had exhibitions in The Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Latvia and Sweden. She is represented by the Gallery Van Zoetendaal, Amsterdam.

Alec Soth (b. 1969, Minneapolis) is an American photographer and member of Magnum Photos. His work is represented in major public and private collections, and has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Being passionate about photography and bookmaking he started his own publishing company Little Brown Mushroom and regularly writes on his blog.

Frank van der Stok (1967) studied art history at the University of Leiden (Netherlands) from 1987 to 1993 and decided to major in photography and lens-based arts. From 1989 to 2000 he was a member of staff at Fotomania Gallery, Rotterdam. Curating exhibitions for the gallery became his main focus, but his curatorial activities gradually expanded to include larger, independent venues, while he was also becoming more interested in the subject of the visual arts 'reflecting on issues of representation'. Currently Van der Stok is the curator of the Dutch Doc Days Festival 2011 in Utrecht (Netherlands).