Events

Membership

About

View: Grid / List

Location

Booklette

14/09/2024—15/09/2024, Vevey

Images Vevey and Photo Elysée organize Booklette, a photobook fair bringing together Swiss and international publishers. The equation is simple and convivial: Books + Raclette = Booklette.

near. is taking part by offering members a guided tour of Biennale Images Vevey and the presentation of their publications at a table among the publishers.

Register to take part to the photobook fair and/or follow a guided tour of the biennial exhibitions on Saturday 14 at 11am: info@near.li

Tiziana Amico, winner near. prize 2024, at Verzasca Foto Festival

30/08/2024, Verzasca

The jury of this year’s near. prize is happy to announce the winner of the edition – Tiziana Amico! Her work will be exhibited at the Verzasca Foto Festival 2024. Come and join us in beautiful Ticino for the opening days August 30 – 31.

Jury statement:
In the project “Nunca Fui Adolescente” (’I Never Was A Teenager’), Amico explores the personal stories of Argentine women who became mothers before adulthood, challenging stigmatized representations of adolescent motherhood, highlighting their resilience and individuality through intimate portrayals created in a collaboration with these young women.

The jury was convinced both by the choice of the author’s subject and the visual decisions taken in the project. The strong visual storytelling is combined with a very personal, almost gentle, approach of Amico to the experiences of these women and the desire to give them a voice and understand their perspective. Through a conscious use of portraiture mixed with images of private writings and symbolic objects, Tiziana Amico manages to create a memorable and powerful, yet very tender visual narrative.

Images credits:
From “Nunca Fui Adolescente” (’I Never Was A Teenager’) by Tiziana Amico

Arles near. x Pool Collective

04/07/2024, Arles

We are very excited to inform you that the dates and location for our event during the opening week of the Rencontres d’Arles have been confirmed. We are collaborating with Pool collective to host an apéro and present our associations at the Librairie du Palais. Alongside this evening we are organising a DIY poster campaign throughout the city of Arles.

near. x nuit des images BYOB

22/06/2024, Lausanne

near. photographers will be bringing their beamers and are presenting an abundance of images on the Plateforme 10 esplanade.

Mainly concerned with the themes of nature, artifacts and identity, discover the work of Tiziana Amico, Graziella Antonini, Yann Amstutz, Thomas Annaheim Lambert, Zoé Aubry, Rebecca Bowring, Aline Bovard Rudaz, Delphine Burtin, Margaux Corda, Marie-Pierre Cravedi, Matthieu Croizier, Ankita Das, Tomasz Fall, Matthias Forster, Anne Gabriel-Jürgens, Yann Haeberlin, Fabian Hugo, Emilien Itim, Khashayar Javanmardi, Stephen Kelly, Yann Laubscher, Arthur Lehmann, Samuel Matzig, Cécile Monnier Laurence Rasti, Nora Rupp, Roxana Savin and Mihai Sovaiala.

near. prize 2024

29/05/2024

We are thrilled to announce the opening of the call for entries for the near. prize 2024!
The winner of the near. prize 2024 will have the opportunity to showcase their work at Verzasca Foto Festival 2024, as well as being awarded 1000 CHF and a free one-year near. membership.

This year’s jury panel comprises of the following fotography experts: Alfio Tommasini, Director and Curator of the Verzasca Foto Festival; Annette Amberg, Director of Coalmine – Raum für Fotografie (Winterthur); and the committee of near. counting as one vote.

The call for entries is open from April 22 to May 29, 2024. The winner will be revealed this June, with their exhibition featured in the 2024 edition of Verzasca Foto Festival.
There is no specific theme for this year’s prize, so please refer to the application form guidelines for comprehensive details.

We eagerly await the submission of your application!

→ Apply now (deadline: Wednesday, May 29, 2024)

(*Please note that the near. prize is exclusively reserved for members of the association.)

Guided Tour near. prize Pedro Rodrigues

18/05/2024

Special guided tour of the Bieler Fototag/ Journées photographiques de Bienne with Pedro Rodrigues, Rebecca Bowring, Julien Heimann and Sarah Girard
near. is pleased to invite you and your near friend and family to join us for a guided tour of the shows in Bienne / Biel in the very special company of the photographers Pedro Rodrigues, winner of the near Prize 2023, Rebecca Bowring, winner of the near prize 2021, Julien Heimann photographer member of near and Sarah Girard, director of the festival.
The entrance is being taken care by us!
Saturday 18th of May, 2.15pm, meeting point 10 Juraplatz Biel / Bienne

Photographer membership

Applies to active photographers who have developed a personal body of work within the field of contemporary photography whether with a documentarian or an artistic approach.
All members get free access to all near. activities and the possibility to apply for free for the ‘near. prize’, as well as various benefits from our partners.

Become a member

Membership fee: CHF 100.– per year. Applicants for a photographer membership are selected by nears.’ committee based on their portfolio. Young photographers (also selected on the basis of their portfolio) benefit from a free one-year membership, as long as they are students or graduated within a year. Note that the near. membership only extends to Swiss nationals or people that live and work in Switzerland.

Selection Criteria

The acceptance of new members into the association is done by the committee following a series of selection criteria which include, among others, the originality of the submitted project and the artist’s vision, the body of work’s aesthetic quality, the coherence between the content and the form given to it, the integration of the submitted work into the author’s broader artistic project and, finally, the relevance of the project in relation to the current challenges faced by the photographic medium.

near. Network members

Art historians, art critics, curators, associations, institutions, publishers, museums, as well as key people in the field of photography are welcome to be part of our Network. Free of charge, this Network is intended to foster connections between our photographers and the photography world. We regularly invite Network members to be part of our jury’s, crit groups or events. Get in touch to be on our website.

Application

A single PDF document, with the following content (please do not exceed 20 MB) 1) 10–20 images (ideally at least two projects, no single images) 2) a written overview statement of the project(s) in english or french 3) a CV and/or Biography 4) full contact and site * Please note that applications not corresponding to the above guidelines will be rejected. Send to: info@near.li

Procedure

Please send us all content, as listed below. The committee gets together 2 times a year to consider applications and discuss the subscriptions. Deadlines to submit your portfolio: March 1st and September 1st of each year.

Expectations

— Do one Takeover of the near. Instagram account. — Be ready to participate in the ‘near. photographic collection’ which consists of a collection of one print per artist (production is paid by near. selection is done in chronological order of acceptance).— Pay each years membership in due time. — If possible participate to the General Assembly and of course to our events.

Untitled

Matthieu Gafsou

Matthieu Gafsou (CH, F, 1981) lives and works in Lausanne, Switzerland. After completing a master of arts in philosophy, literature and cinema at the Université de Lausanne, he studied photography at the School of Applied Arts in Vevey. Since 2006, Gafsou has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions, and published five books. In 2009 Gafsou was awarded the prestigious ‘Prix de la fondation HSBC pour la photographie’ and subsequently was invited to contribute to the Aperture Foundation’s 2010 reGeneration2 exhibition. In 2014, Lausanne’s influential Musée de l’Elysée hosted Gafsou’s solo show titled Only God Can Judge Me. In 2018, the H+ exhibition was one of the highlights of Les Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles. In parallel to his artistic practice, Gafsou is on faculty at ECAL.

Contact

Awards

2015Cultural Prize photography of the canton of Vaud
2010reGeneration 2, Musée de l’Elysée
2009HSBC Foundation prize
2008Fotoforum Pasquart prize

Exhibitions

2019Civilization, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul
2018H+, les Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles
2014Only God Can Judge Me, Musée de l’Elysée, Suissse
2011reGeneration2, Aperture Fondation, New York, USA
2010Surfaces, Musée d’art contemporain, Marseille

Publications

2018Gafsou, Matthieu, H+, Actes Sud
2014Gafsou, Matthieu, Only God Can Judge Me, Kehrer
2012Gafsou, Matthieu, Sacré, idPure
Gafsou, Matthieu, Alpes, 19/80
2009Gafsou, Matthieu, Survaces, Actes Sud

Awards

2015Cultural Prize photography of the canton of Vaud
2010reGeneration 2, Musée de l’Elysée
2009HSBC Foundation prize
2008Fotoforum Pasquart prize

Exhibitions

2019Civilization, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul
2018H+, les Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles
2014Only God Can Judge Me, Musée de l’Elysée, Suissse
2011reGeneration2, Aperture Fondation, New York, USA
2010Surfaces, Musée d’art contemporain, Marseille

Publications

2018Gafsou, Matthieu, H+, Actes Sud
2014Gafsou, Matthieu, Only God Can Judge Me, Kehrer
2012Gafsou, Matthieu, Sacré, idPure
Gafsou, Matthieu, Alpes, 19/80
2009Gafsou, Matthieu, Survaces, Actes Sud