A central condition within artistic training contexts is the simultaneous need for orientation and embrace, alongside a demand for autonomy. Being guided by someone and subsequently negotiating one’s way out of said guidance, rests on a delicate, ideally trust-based relational framework. Within processes of artistic development, the boundaries between professional distance and closeness are often blurred, making them sites of subtle and often unspoken negotiation. What emerges is a highly coded field in which institutional and interpersonal roles are not only enacted but continuously re-articulated in performative terms. Ciaran’s work is situated precisely within this ambivalence. Employing a precise, incisive and humorous visual language, he examines the fragile in-between of closeness and distance, authority and intimacy. Humor operates as a structuring device that loosens the rigidity of the compositions and introduces a distinct tonal unruliness. In these shifts, the works foreground the understated negotiations that underpin artistic relational systems, opening up a perspective that is at once analytically attentive and playfully reflective.
Is He Family? is a collaborative body of work created with Neil, the artist’s former drama teacher and now friend. The project takes its title from coded language once used within queer communities, where phrases such as “are they family?” functioned as signals of recognition, safety, and solidarity in contexts where openly queer existence carried risk. This quiet register of belonging forms the conceptual core of the work: a transgenerational dialogue on queerness, kinship, and the conditions of belonging. In making these images, the artist seeks to move beyond the erotic framing through which queer male identity has often been represented. Through his presence and biography, Neil becomes a bridge between different temporalities of queer experience. The act of photographing him operates as a gesture of care and recognition—an approach to identity grounded less in desire than in empathy and shared lived experience. The theatre, where much of the work is staged, functions as a natural site for this exchange: a space of performance and transformation, but also of rehearsal and memory, where identities are continuously formed, negotiated, and preserved. Together, the images reflect on chosen family and the ways in which intimacy, collaboration, and performative play enable forms of connection and belonging that extend beyond fixed categories of identity.
Ciaran is a London-based commercial photographer working across brand campaigns, advertising and editorial commissions. His collaborative approach combines storytelling with emotional sensitivity, encouraging creative partnerships that celebrate authentic moments. Ciaran balances his commitment to open communication and shared vision with his own distinctive photographic language to create striking imagery. Beyond brand commissions, Ciaran’s personal practice explores gay identity and reflects on the nuances of subjects such as sexuality, faith and self. His bold portraits and staged pictures carry tender and intimate narratives. Favoring natural light, he makes images that are both carefully considered and visually distinctive allowing space for ambiguity, freedom and quiet reflection. Ciaran’s talent for image making has developed over many years, beginning with an interest in stop-motion animation which led him to study photography at London South Bank University. In 2025, he completed an MA in Commercial Photography at the London College of Communication (UAL).
Ein zentrales Moment in künstlerischen Ausbildungskontexten ist das Bedürfnis nach Halt und Orientierung, aber auch nach größtmöglicher Autonomie. Das Sich-in-die-Hände einer leitenden Position Begeben und das wieder daraus Herauslösen basiert auf einem sensiblen im besten Fall vertrauensvollen Gefüge. Gerade in künstlerischen Entwicklungsprozessen verschieben sich dabei die Grenzen zwischen professioneller Distanz und persönlicher Nähe häufig und werden selbst zum Gegenstand stiller Aushandlungen. Es entsteht ein stark kodiertes Feld, in dem Rollenverhältnisse nicht nur gelebt, sondern auch performativ verhandelt werden. Ciarans Arbeiten setzen genau an dieser Ambivalenz an. Mit einer präzisen, humorvollen und spitzen Bildsprache untersucht er den prekären Zwischenraum von Nähe und Distanz, Autorität und Intimität. Der Humor löst die Strenge der Kompositionen in einer eigenen Komik auf. Subtile Verschiebungen werden sichtbar und eröffnen einen zugleich reflektierten wie spielerischen Blick auf die Bedingungen künstlerischer Beziehungssysteme.
Is He Family? ist eine kollaborative Arbeit, entstanden in Zusammenarbeit mit Neil, dem ehemaligen Theaterlehrer des Künstlers und heutigen Freund. Der Titel greift eine kodierte Sprache innerhalb queerer Communities auf, in der Formulierungen wie „are they family?“ als Zeichen von Wiedererkennung, Sicherheit und Solidarität fungierten, in Kontexten, in denen ein offen queeres Leben mit Risiko verbunden war. Dieses leise Register von Zugehörigkeit bildet den konzeptuellen Kern der Arbeit: ein transgenerationaler Dialog über Queerness, Verwandtschaft und die Bedingungen von Zugehörigkeit. In der Bildfindung zielt die Arbeit darauf ab, die häufige Reduktion queerer männlicher Identität auf einen erotischen Blick zu hinterfragen. Durch seine Präsenz und Biografie wird Neil zu einer Verbindungslinie zwischen unterschiedlichen Zeitlichkeiten queerer Erfahrung. Ihn zu fotografieren wird dabei zu einem Akt der Fürsorge und Anerkennung – einem Zugang zu Identität, der weniger über Begehren als über Empathie und geteilte Erfahrung definiert ist. Das Theater, in dem ein Großteil der Arbeit inszeniert ist, fungiert als zentraler Ort dieser Auseinandersetzung: ein Raum der Performance und Transformation, zugleich aber auch der Probe und Erinnerung, in dem Identitäten fortlaufend entstehen, verhandelt und bewahrt werden. Die Bilder reflektieren gemeinsam die Idee der chosen family und die Art und Weise, wie Intimität, Kollaboration und spielerische Formen des Arbeitens Verbindungen und Zugehörigkeit ermöglichen, die über festgeschriebene Identitätskategorien hinausweisen.
Ciaran lebt und arbeitet in London als kommerzieller Fotograf, zwischen Markenkommunikation, Werbung und redaktionellen Auftragsarbeiten. Seine Praxis ist von einem kollaborativen Ansatz geprägt, der narrative Strukturen mit einer ausgeprägten emotionalen Sensibilität verbindet. Im Zentrum steht dabei die Entwicklung kreativer Partnerschaften, die auf Authentizität und geteilten Momenten basieren. Ciaran verbindet eine offene, dialogische Arbeitsweise mit einer eigenständigen fotografischen Sprache und entwickelt daraus Bildwelten von hoher visueller Prägnanz. Neben seinen Auftragsarbeiten ist seine künstlerische Praxis von einer kontinuierlichen Auseinandersetzung mit schwuler Identität geprägt. In diesem Kontext untersucht er die Vielschichtigkeit von Sexualität, Glauben und Selbstverhältnis. Seine Porträts und inszenierten Arbeiten bewegen sich zwischen Stärke und Zartheit und entwickeln intime, narrativ aufgeladene Bildräume. Die bevorzugte Arbeit mit natürlichem Licht verstärkt dabei die Offenheit seiner Bildsprache, die bewusst Raum für Ambiguität, Leichtigkeit und kontemplative Momente lässt. Ciarans Zugang zur Bildproduktion hat sich über viele Jahre entwickelt, ausgehend von einem frühen Interesse an Stop-Motion-Animation, das ihn schließlich zum Studium der Fotografie an der London South Bank University führte. 2025 schloss er seinen Master in Commercial Photography am London College of Communication (UAL) ab.
“Hors-Jeu” is a French pun on the offside rule in football, literally “out of the game”, paired with a Turkish phrase meaning “queer people are everywhere.” This juxtaposition reflects the paradox at its core: queer communities in Turkey are systematically pushed to the margins, yet remain present across all social and geographic spaces.
The project follows Betty, who lives between concealment and emergence, navigating a reality shaped by transition, fear, and survival. These objects do not appear as incidental props, but as carriers of meaning, material condensations of self-assurance, protection and inner orientation.
TOPS explores the vulnerability inherent in processes of bodily and subjective transformation, focusing on individuals who have undergone top surgery. Through a combination of group and individual portraits, as well as interior settings, the work traces moments of transition in which identity is continuously unraveling and re-forming.
Is He Family? is a collaborative body of work created with Neil, the artist’s former drama teacher and now friend. The project takes its title from coded language once used within queer communities, where phrases such as “are they family?” functioned as signals of recognition, safety, and solidarity in contexts where openly queer existence carried risk.
Held by Each other: Community care and Queer Survival in Nigeria reflects many different forms of holding each other, rooted in Nigeria but also transcending geographically and culturally constrained spaces. It speaks to a search for sanctuary, for closeness in distance and for a sense of family within diverse constellations, universal longings that take shape as different forms of a warm embrace.
What has become of the people portrayed in Ali Mahini’s series Prince of Persia in the months since encountering the work, whether they are still alive, remains unknown. Nor do we know the current state of the park that served as their place of gathering. Concrete information from within and about Iran is, at present, scarcely accessible.
We are deeply moved by Tania Navarro’s story, as well as by the strength, resilience and joy of life reflected in the eyes captured by Luca Gaetano Pira in his documentary series.
Sergei Stroitelev’s series is carried by cool, subdued tones and soft light. Interiors and carefully placed objects interact and become carriers of emotion. A sense of being held unfolds, located not only in interpersonal relationships but also in objects and letters that store and transmit memory.
Bienyl Huelgas shows a poetic visual language of mythic imagery and written thought, presenting the notion of holding each other not only between individuals but as a collective structure: a shared carrying of pain, memory and desire within a community that stabilizes itself.
In moments of crisis, censorship and systematic erasure, the need for support becomes all the more urgent. Léa Fiterman develops a precise yet poetic visual language in response, in which formal restraint and tactile interventions play a central role.
Duet is an ongoing collaboration between the two artists Zac Thompson and JuJu rooted in film photography and performance, shaped by shared experiences of growing up in religious, evangelical environments.
Searching for safe and welcoming spaces, sites that allow for free self-expression and enable lives beyond the margins, aligns not only with geo-political borders but often also across the divide between rural and urban contexts.
林家夯 Lin Jaihang shows a fragile interplay of familiarity, desire and care through gestures of physical closeness. His photographs are tender and playful, characterized by light, warmth, and intimacy. In a darkening present, they offer a perspective that reminds us of the possibility of beauty in closeness.
