Lars Boering (NL)
is director of the European Journalism Centre (EJC) and founder of Triggertale.com, a platform for visual communication and storytelling. From 2015 to 2021, he directed the World Press Photo Foundation. He describes himself as a photopreneur, is a photography consultant, teacher, collector and advisor. Lars has co-produced exhibitions with photographers, festivals, museums and art foundations, works as a curator and judges‘ competitions at the highest level.
Gisela Kayser (D)
was managing director and artistic director of the Willy Brandt House in Berlin for 25 years. Already in 1997, one year after its opening, she declared “concerned photography” as the focus of the exhibitions she curated and made the galleries one of the first addresses for contemporary photography in Germany. She was nominator of the International Center of Photography in New York, for the Robert Capa Award and is jury member of numerous national and international photography awards.
Walter Köhler (A)
founded Terra Mater Factual Studios in 2011, of which he is CEO. Since then, he has won some 300 international film awards, including a shortlist nomination for Best Documentary at the 2017 Oscars for “The Ivory Game”, about the illegal ivory trade, and the prestigious Audience Award at the 2019 Sundance Festival for “Sea of Shadows,” about the world’s most endangered whale, the vaquita. He looks back on nearly 35 successful years in the film business. In the 1990s, he built up ORF’s Natural History Unit. Since his collaboration on the BBC films “Deep Blue” (2003) and “Earth” (2007), Walter Köhler has been considered an “industry legend”.
Gerd Ludwig (USA)
is one of the most renowned photographers in the world. He has been working for National Geographic for 25 years. His main interest is documenting the socio-economic changes in the countries of the former Soviet Union after the end of the “Cold War”. Ludwig has received numerous awards, including the Dr. Erich Salomon Prize, awarded by the German Society for Photography for lifetime achievement in photography.
Václav Macek (SK)
is a professor at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava. He studied film and theater at Charles University in Prague. He is the author of numerous books on film and photography. As director, he heads the Central European House of Photography in Bratislava. In 2004, together with Jean-Luc Monterosso, he was co-founder of the European Month of Photography (EMOP), which he has been organising in Bratislava since then. He is one of the leading experts on Eastern European photography.
Karin Rehn-Kaufmann (A)
first studied German language and literature and philosophy at the University of Freiburg and completed her studies with a diploma at the Eurythmic College in Stuttgart. Today she is Art Director and General Representative for Leica Galleries International and has management responsibility for 25 galleries worldwide. Extremely successful, she curated a number of international exhibitions such as the Chinaflug project, the Leica Galerie exhibition concept at Photokina 2012, 2014 and 2016 in Cologne and the 10×10 exhibition for the 100th anniversary of Leica Photography. Since 2019, she has additionally been responsible for the Ernst Leitz Photo Museum in Wetzlar. She has also been a member of the jury of the Oskar Barnack Award since 2008.
Gilles Steinmann (CH)
studied Cultural Media Studies at the Media Training Center (MAZ) in Lucerne and at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). Steinmann began his career as a web designer and photographer for various newspapers and magazines. Since March 2011, he has worked at Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) as a member of the picture editorial team, which he has headed as Director of Photography since June 2017.
Fritz Fanz Vogel (CH)
studied at the Universities of Fribourg and Zurich and at the Zurich University of the Arts. He works as a cultural scientist, art and photo historian, and has been a productive, collaborative and interdisciplinary editor and curator in the media of text, photography and books since 1992. Researches, teaches, publishes and exhibits in the fields of staged and documentary photography, popular and free theater, image studies and art history, exponatics, alphabets, body images and erotica.
Eric Falt (F)
is a French senior official at the United Nations who currently serves as Director and UNESCO Representative for the UNESCO Cluster Office in Rabat, Morocco. Prior to his current appointment, he held senior positions at the United Nations and UNESCO. From 2010 to 2018, he was deputy director-general for external relations and public relations at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. Falt was a trustee for the Television Trust for the Environment, London, from 2002 to 2009 and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is also a jury member of the Global Peace Photo Award.
Claudia Zingerli (CH)
studied geography, social anthropology and economics at the Universities of Basel and Freiburg im Breisgau and holds a PhD degree in development studies from the University of East Anglia. She is an engaged interface coordinator with a special focus on the political nature of resource management as well as the politics of knowledge production in sustainable development. Today she is the Head of ETH Sustainability at ETH Zurich and active in diverse voluntary mandates.
The exhibition builders
Aroma Productions AG (CH/ZH)
Founded 25 years ago by Lukas Meier, Aroma Productions AG is one of the largest and best-known full-service agencies in Switzerland. The planners and producers of Aroma Productions are behind numerous major events such as the Zurich Film Festival, the opening of the National Museum or the Lucerne Light Festival. Together with the creative team of Aroma Creative, Aroma Productions develops and realises exhibitions and worlds of experience, such as the Selfie Hotel in Zurich and Lausanne or the WOW Museum in Zurich. – Aroma has its own workshops, advertising material production, studio as well as vehicle fleet and is at home on around 5,500m2 in the NŒRD in Zurich Oerlikon. www.aroma.ch