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Created by Manon Wertenbroek in 2014. The artwork is a pigment print on Hahnemuhle Fine Art 285gr, on aluminum, on wood, and with paint, and displayed at 90.5 x 72 cm.

Waves from the Web, 2009

Visible in

The bright colours and cartoon-like drawings on the model’s body create a playful image. At the same time, the model’s elegant posture might remind you of a classic sculpture from the Renaissance era. In 

, Manon Wertenbroek combines the art of sculpture with the medium of photography. By incorporating the model into all sorts of compositions of colours, circles, blocks, numbers and frames, Wertenbroek explores a rather unconventional approach to portraiture. The young man in the photograph is her brother. They were very close as children, but grew apart as they grew older. Creating this series was a way for Wertenbroek to restore the bond with her brother. Yet her brother cannot recognise himself in the portraits, so that these represent her own projections rather than his actual self. 

Manon Wertenbroek was part of the 2015 Foam Talent selection. Her image 

 served as the cover image for the talent issue of Foam Magazine. 

Tandem Rose, 2014 from the series Tandem, 2014

Tandem Rose, 2014

Created by Sara Cwynar in 2012. The artwork is a c-print and displayed at 37 x 30 cm.

Collages are a returning photographic approach in Sara Cwynar’s artistic practice. Combining existing objects and artifacts into a new visual assembly, Cwynar plays with the meaning and role that visual materials play in contemporary society. She collects everyday items, once produced for a certain purpose, and recombines them in order to take control of the narrative. Why do people collect things? How do these items interact with our memories? Through this exploration, Cwynar reflects on how images and objects construct our experiences – and the world around us. 

 was part of Sara Cwynar’s first solo-exhibition, 

Studio Pile, 2012 from the series Everything in the studio (destroyed)

Studio Pile, 2012

Created by Stephen Gill. The artwork is a pigment print on Canson Platine Fiber Rag and displayed at 78,6 x 60,8 cm.

What do you experience when you look at the colours and textures in this photograph? Since there is no clear subject, the viewer is drawn into an interplay of warm colours and abstract shapes. Instead of telling a story, this photograph seems intended to convey a feeling. 

, in which Gill attempts to visualise the intensity of urban life in the London borough of Hackney. For this series, artist Stephen Gill experimented with the photographic process by soaking the negatives in energy drink. The result is a dreamy image, where virtually all traces of the original image have disappeared. 

 is like a visual poem, in which the message lies beneath the surface.  

 was introduced to the public during Foam’s first major retrospective devoted to the English photographer Stephen Gill.  In addition to 

, the exhibition showed work from his series 

Untitled from the series Best Before End

Untitled 3 from the series Best Before End

In analogue photography, a ‘negative’ image (in which the colours are inverted) is converted in the dark room into a so-called positive image, which is the resulting photograph. This is a technical procedure that requires a series of steps. Artist Stephen Gill likes to play with this process by introducing different steps. For his series 

, he does so by submerging the negative in energy drink. This not only causes a beautiful colour palette to emerge on the photo-negative, but also allows Gill to distort the photo. The sweet drink causes the light-sensitive layer of the photo film to let go, after which Gill can manipulate it with a fine brush. In this case, the process has resulted in an almost spooky portrait with unique colours and a fascinating texture. The final image is a photograph of the manipulated negative.  

Untitled 2 from the series Best Before End

After having documented the London district of Hackney for fourteen years, artist Stephen Gill felt that there was something lacking in his work. How can you capture the intensity of busy city life in an image? By experimenting with the process of making as well as of printing his analogue photographs, he found new ways to capture this feeling in images. For example, in his series 

 Gill experimented with energy drink: by letting the negatives soak in the sweet fluid for a while, the light-sensitive layer of the film softened. The result is an abstract image with wonderfully warm colours, as this picture shows. What feelings does this photograph evoke in you?  

 was introduced to the public during Foam’s first major retrospective devoted to the English photographer Stephen Gill. In addition to 

Untitled 1 from the series Best Before End

Created by Stephen Gill. The artwork is a pigment print on Canson Platine Fiber Rag and displayed at 111,76 x 111,76 cm.

What innovative approaches do photographers take towards the medium? Numerous artists like to experiment with photographic techniques in order to transcend the limitations of the medium and thereby to push its boundaries. 

, by the English artist Stephen Gill. By combining different perspectives – such as large versus small, far away versus nearby – Gill plays with the scale of the subjects of his photographs. Adding a measuring tape further enhances this effect by suggesting that the branches in the background are similar in size to the woodlouse in the corner. By highlighting details, Gill invites the viewer to reflect on the relationship between humans and nature and how other organisms understand the world around. 

Untitled from the series Talking to Ants

Untitled 2 from the series Talking to Ants

Look at this work for ten seconds – what strikes you most? The river landscape, the smiling girl, or perhaps the abstract shapes in the foreground? Stephen Gill’s work requires time to sink in. By layering multiple negatives while printing photographs, a collage of different images results.  

But another layer lies across the serene landscape and smiling girl: abstract shapes that resemble the things you see through a microscope. These traces are the result of objects that Gill deliberately places inside his camera, prior to taking photographs. In this way he attempts to create confusion in the scale relations between the different images. This unique approach emphasises the refined and disquieting beauty of Gill’s photography, in which every detail is cast in a new light, in surprising ways. 

Untitled 1 from the series Talking to Ants

Foam 3h: Karolina Wojtas We can't live – without each other, 2022

Award prize

About the grant

Most recent exhibitions

Previous winners

Foam Paul Huf Award

Foam 3h

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More talent initiatives

Florentine Riem Vis Grant

 in 2014. Using inkjet print as the main medium, the artwork is displayed at 120 x 90 cm.

Maldoror #6, 2014

Foam is supported by the VriendenLoterij, Foam Members, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, the VandenEnde Foundation and the City of Amsterdam.

In 2021 Foam receives additional support from the Mondriaan Fund and Kickstart Cultuurfonds

visible in

When Jean-Vincent Simonet came across the book 

 (The Songs of Maldoror), he felt hugely attracted to the dark, theatrical and transgressive character. The cutting-edge book praising youth revolt, blasphemy and the victory of dream over reality was published in 1869 by Comte de Lautréamont. Simonet decided to revive the literary enigma. His photographs are based on the atmosphere it evokes: gothic angels provided with dramatic blue photoshopped skies full of stars and dead branches merged into pink and blue shapes that look like hairs. The eclectic style inspired him to shift between analogue and digital, using digital techniques to glitch and merge photographs. This enables the mysterious atmosphere of the book to become tangible in the pictures. That the book was once banned because of its blasphemous character, comes as no surprise.

Maldoror #6

For information and visual material please check www.foam.org/press or contact the press office of Foam on +31 (0)20 5516500 / pressoffice@foam.org

Note to editors

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Hiền Hoàng - Garden of Entanglement

For more information and visual material please contact the Press Office of Foam via pressoffice@foam.org.

Announcement Winner Foam Paul Huf Award 2024

Foam 3h: ShuShu Sieberns

Aby Fulani

Dialect, 2020-2023

Dialect, 2023, Courtesy of LooseJoints

Installation view of Dialect

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Ask The Artist: Felipe Romero Beltrán

Egg Glitch. From the series American Glitch

Installation view 'American Glitch' by Andrea Orejarena & Caleb Stein in Foam Talent 2024-2025

For Orejarena and Stein, the notion of glitch proves fruitful framework for reflecting on many questions, not least on the ubiquitous medium of photography and its changing meaning and purpose in the screen age – where the’ poor image’, in Hito Steyerl’s term, circulates in unfathomable quantities.

Foam Talent Digital 2024-2025

Andrea Orejarena & Caleb Stein

Foam proudly presents the work of a new generation of artists in the group exhibition 

. The 20 participating photographers address the pressing problems of our times. Together, they explore and extend the boundaries of what photography is today.   

As a diverse group of artists, each of them presents their own visual language. Through their works, they critically look at the world around us. They use the photographic medium to question collective affairs and ongoing issues happening in the world. At the same time, they explore how these issues have an impact on a personal level, moving between a local, historical, symbolic, emotional and bodily perspective. 

This group of artists uses a wide range of photographic genres to tell their stories. With portraiture and documentary photography, digital created images and archival material, the talents create a space for the viewer to sit with situations and current events, to reflect and respond to.   

Complementing the physical experience at Foam, this digital exhibition offers a deeper look at the Talents and their works. What goes on behind the surface? What is the inspiration? What techniques are used? This exhibition combines artistic context with educational perspectives. Read, see, and hear more about the themes and topics and explore, engage, and interact with the works! 

 are: Marwan Bassiouni, Myriam Boulos, Olgaç Bozalp, Laura Chen, Kata Geibl, Lina Geoushy, Marvel Harris, Alexandra Rose Howland, Ange-Frédéric Koffi, Czar Kristoff, Yushi Li, Carla Liesching, Seif Kousmate, Pavo Marinović, Diego Moreno, Donja Nasseri, Ghazaleh Rezaei, Linn Phyllis Seeger, Ritsch Sisters, Donavon Smallwood.

Talent issue of Foam Magazine are supported by the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation.

The exhibition is made possible by Kleurgamma Fine-Art Photolab and Oschatz Visuelle Medien.

Foam is supported by the VriendenLoterij, Foam Members, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, the VandenEnde Foundation and the Gemeente Amsterdam. 

In 2022 Foam receives additional support from the Mondriaan Fund and receives a contribution through the Mondriaan Fund from the Ministerie van OCW.

The Feast Inside, from the series Paintings Dreams and Love

Graphic Foam Talent 2022

How to...

Czar Kristoff

Audio fragment for To Destroy Is To Build

from the series To Destroy is To Build

The momentary monument 'To Destroy Is To Build' is not only a web-to-print project but web-to-print-to-monument-to-publication-to... It leaks and flows like new media, like the flood, like the architecture of future society.

from the series To Destroy Is To Build

Myriam Boulos

Audio fragment for Tell the Trees to Smile by Myriam Boulos

Tell the Trees to Smile

from the series Tell the Trees to Smile

I remember Andrea's tears while we were walking towards his destroyed house that he was seeing for the first time since the explosion.

“All the war memories rushed back...
We
rushed to the corridors to hide which was exactly our moves and practice during the Lebanese civil war when the bombing would start.”

Zeina
worked on a rescue mission with a Chile team for 3 days.
The Chile team thought that someone was stuck under the ruins of a building.
“During these
3 days, the hope of finding someone was controlling us.”

Michel lost
his hearing aid during the explosion.
When he wants to listen to music, he puts the radio against his ear.

On August 4, Walid was at home with me. He was on this same balcony when the explosion happened. (...) (I cried in his room and in his arms every day for a few months after the explosion.)

When I gave her this tiny flower, my grandmother told me “Dis aux arbres de sourire”, which means tell the trees to smile.

Marwan Bassiouni

Audio fragment for New Western Views by Marwan Bassiouni

from the series New Swiss Views

from the series New British Views

from the series New Dutch Views

Ghazaleh Rezaei

'Lamentation' from the series The Martyrs

'The Pieta' from the series The Martyrs

'Carrying of the Martyr's Portrait' from the series The Martyrs

Bringing to Light

'Burial' from the series The Martyrs

Kata Geibl

from the series See Daylight

from the series Nothing New Under the Sun

Audio clip for Kata Geibl - There is Nothing New Under The Sun / See Daylight

from the series There Is Nothing New Under the Sun / See Daylight

Donja Nasseri

from the series Woman, who would be King

Audio clip for Donja Nasseri - Woman, who would be King

Alexandra Rose Howland

Audio clip for Alexandra Rose Howland - Leave and Let Us Go

from the series Leave and Let Us Go

Pavo Marinović

Audio clip for Pavo Marinovic - Marble Ass

Marble Ass

Talent Digital 2022

For information and visual material please check www.foam.org/press or contact the Press Office of Foam on +31 (0)20 5516500 / pressoffice@foam.org

Felipe Romero Beltrán - winner of the Foam Paul Huf Award

Sarah Amrani - Terror of Beauty

Michael, Michael at home, Portland, Oregon, USA, May, 2015

Who has the power to decide which photographers get particular resources and opportunities? What are the ethical dilemmas around commissions and assignments? We highlight a few industry resources that provide practical advice for photographers who are trying to navigate the territory between their own practice and the media industry at large.

Archive of Public Protests

In Practice: Resources for Photographers

We invited musician and producer Aby Fulani to create a playlist inspired by the works of Liz Johnson Artur. Offering a fresh way to experience the exhibition, music adds new dimensions to the essence of Liz's work, especially while museum doors are closed.

The different rooms were displayed like an assembly of different drummers and percussionists.

Liz Johnson Artur - of life of love of sex of movement of hope, 2021

Foam proudly presents the solo exhibition 

by Hiền Hoàng, which encourages a multi-sensory reflection on the connection between humans and nature. Her practice is deeply shaped by interdisciplinary collaborations with scientists and technologists which reveal the ambivalent role of technology as both a means to understand nature and a force that distances us from it. 

Scent from Heaven, Still from the Film No. 3, 2023.

Foam

A new best life, 2021

A scan from the Photo album of the artist's late aunt.

Made in Rice, backstage from the left video, 2021.

Lidar-Mesh from the experiment, 2024

What meaning do we assign to images on the internet? And to what extent do we identify with them? In collaboration with online platform 

, Foam presents an online mapping game to explore this: 

Do we share similar interpretations of images, or do we associate completely different meanings with them?

Metaphormaxxing: A Mapping Game

, the first solo museum exhibition by artist Sarah Amrani. With her work, Amrani explores the complex relationship between technology, culture and beauty standards. The multimedial exhibition invites visitors to think critically about how our perception of beauty and identity is shaped in the digital age. 

Strategy of Beautification, Hijab and Face Cut Out, 2017

Strategy of Beautification, 2018

Untitled, 2017

Foam 3h: Sarah Amrani - Terror of Beauty

, the first solo museum exhibition by artist Sarah Amrani. With her work, Amrani explores the complex relationship between technology, culture and beauty standards. 

Join us at Foam 3h from 17.30 to 21.00 hrs for this official event with free museum admission. The evening will feature a Q&A session with Foam curator Aya Musa and Sarah Amrani.

Strategy of Beautification, Hijab and Face Cut Out, video still, 2017

Opening Sarah Amrani - Terror of Beauty 

Artist ShuShu Sieberns tries to create a bridge between two different worlds: one where queer identity and traditional Russian family values can coexist alongside each other. The exhibition 

 serves as a sensitive exploration of the internal conflict that the artist experiences in 

the relationship between her deeply religious grandmother and her partner.

Multimedia

FAQ

Tandem Rose, 2014

Studio Pile, 2012

Untitled

Untitled

Untitled

Untitled

Untitled

Florentine Riem Vis Grant

Maldoror #6, 2014

Hiền Hoàng - Garden of Entanglement

Announcement Winner Foam Paul Huf Award 2024

Foam 3h: ShuShu Sieberns

Ask The Artist:
Felipe Romero Beltrán

Talent Digital 2022

Felipe Romero Beltrán - winner of the Foam Paul Huf Award

Sarah Amrani - Terror of Beauty

In Practice: Resources for Photographers on Assignment

Playlist by Aby Fulani: visualising the work of Liz Johnson Artur through sound

Hiền Hoàng
Garden of Entanglement

Metaphormaxxing:
A Mapping Game

Foam 3h: Sarah Amrani
Terror of Beauty

Opening Foam 3h: Sarah Amrani Terror of Beauty

Foam 3h:
ShuShu Sieberns
Young Human

Multimedia

FAQ

Tandem Rose, 2014

Studio Pile, 2012

Untitled

Untitled

Untitled

Untitled

Untitled

Florentine Riem Vis Grant

Maldoror #6, 2014

Hiền Hoàng - Garden of Entanglement

Announcement Winner Foam Paul Huf Award 2024

Foam 3h: ShuShu Sieberns

Ask The Artist: Felipe Romero Beltrán

Talent Digital 2022

Felipe Romero Beltrán - winner of the Foam Paul Huf Award

Sarah Amrani - Terror of Beauty

In Practice: Resources for Photographers on Assignment

Playlist by Aby Fulani: visualising the work of Liz Johnson Artur through sound

Hiền Hoàng Garden of Entanglement

Metaphormaxxing:A Mapping Game

Foam 3h: Sarah AmraniTerror of Beauty

Opening Foam 3h: Sarah Amrani Terror of Beauty

Foam 3h:ShuShu SiebernsYoung Human

Ask The Artist:
Felipe Romero Beltrán

Hiền Hoàng
Garden of Entanglement

Metaphormaxxing:
A Mapping Game

Foam 3h: Sarah Amrani
Terror of Beauty

Foam 3h:
ShuShu Sieberns
Young Human