Featured Image by Thérèse Anna Rafter
PhotoIreland is excited to announce the 5 artists selected to join the FUTURES Photography Platform in 2026. They are: Eslam Abd El Salam, Izabela Szczutkowska, Jack Moyse, Thérèse Anna Rafter, and Varvara Uhlik. The five artists were selected from a high number of submissions, which underlines artists’ appreciation of FUTURES as a substantial career development opportunity.
In selecting artists for opportunities such as New Irish Works, RADAR, RELAY, and FUTURES, PhotoIreland believes it is important to employ a variety of approaches that ensure transparent and informed decisions, expanding the team’s knowledge of the discipline with that of other art professionals from Ireland and abroad. We are very grateful to the invited jury for their contribution to the process: Eamonn Doyle (Photographer), Siân Addicott (Director, Ffotogallery), and Vivienne Gamble (Director, Stills Centre for Photography).
In joining the platform, now in its 9th year, the artists not only enter a growing list of talent from across Europe, but also benefit from a growing range of opportunities supported by Creative Europe and the 23 platform members planned throughout the present year, culminating in an annual networking event, hosted by FOTODOK in Utrecht.
You can discover more about each artist in the introduction texts below.
Eslam Abd El Salam
Eslam Abd El Salam is a visual artist based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His work focuses on walking as a pedagogical practice and is centered around the body: the body in motion, in contact with nature, and in the presence of other bodies.
Through the mediums of analogue photography, Polaroids, text, moving image, and mixed media, Eslam considers notions of synchronicity, specifically in relation to friendship and serendipitous encounters with others. Other recurring themes in his work include family archives, time, and displacement. He is keen to visually find the common thread between the personal and collective within his artistic practice.
Originally from Cairo, Egypt, and based in Belfast since 2022, Eslam’s journey to Ireland began in March 2019 as an artist-in-residence at The Curfew Tower in Cushendall. His work has been exhibited internationally in Finland, France, Latvia, Egypt, and the UK. Most recently, he has worked with Kunstverein Aughrim on developing a long-term photographic and installation project called Can You See with Your Heart? that was exhibited during Craic in the Granite Music & Arts Festival on the 27th of June 2025.
Images from Can You See With Your Heart?
Izabela Szczutkowska
Izabela Szczutkowska is a Polish visual artist based in West Cork, Ireland. Working with photography, collage, darkroom-based processes, and installation, her practice revolves around the ontological question of photography, drawing on autobiographical themes such as identity and the concept of home. Interested in testing the limits of photographic freedom, her open-ended, process-led research is driven more by inquiry than definitive answers. Alongside her practice, Szczutkowska collaborates with the Irish music scene, producing band portraits, music videos, and album artwork.
She holds an MA in Art, Research Collaboration from IADT and a BA (Hons) in Photography from TU Dublin. Earlier studies include Photographic Studies and TV & Film Production at St. John’s College, Cork.
Szczutkowska’s work has been exhibited in group shows across Ireland, including the RHA, Dublin, Lavit Gallery, Cork, Photo Museum Ireland, The Lab Gallery, and an upcoming exhibition at Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin.
Images from Siar.
Jack Moyse
Born in 1996, Moyse is based in Swansea, Wales, and has an MA in photography from Plymouth College of Art. He holds a position at Teesside University, lecturing and leading their MA in Photography. His practice focuses on the lived disabled experience, providing insight into and exposure for those marginalised in the UK, and the oppressive systems they encounter. Moyse has exhibited at BayArt and Ffotogallery in Cardiff, Mission Gallery in Swansea, Belfast Exposed, and MOMA Machynlleth. He was recently awarded a Welsh Arts Council grant to continue his inquiry into The Sorry State.
Images from The Sorry State.
Thérèse Anna Rafter (b. 1989, Dublin, Ireland) is an artist and researcher working across photography and installation. Her practice investigates how the living world is mediated within Western visual culture, with particular attention to institutional modes of representation and display. Engaging critically with the legacies of natural history, museum practices, and photographic visual regimes, Rafter’s work explores the boundaries through which human–animal–land relations are constructed and maintained.
Characterised by a measured tension between restraint and sensitivity, her work is articulated through a rigorous analogue approach to material, form, and production. By foregrounding processes of framing, preservation, and visibility, Rafter challenges anthropocentric ways of seeing and considers how knowledge of nonhuman life is produced and encountered.
Rafter holds a BA in Photography and completed an MA in Visual Arts in 2024. She is currently undertaking a research Master’s at Sint Lucas School of Arts, Antwerp, Belgium.
Images from Tremor.
Varvara Uhlik (b.1997, Ukraine) is a London-based visual artist who explores themes of Slavic culture and identity, with a focus on the post-Soviet era’s impact on her generation.
Working across photography, installation, and video, Varvara often reworks archival materials, bringing them into dialogue with contemporary narratives and newly produced work. Through this process, she examines the tension between past and present, reality and its digital afterlife, foregrounding the impermanence of our surroundings and the fragility of memory.
In 2024, the British Journal of Photography recognised Varvara as a Ones to Watch artist. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at The Sunday Painter, London; Photo Élysée Museum, Switzerland; European Photography Month, Tokyo; MIA Milan Photo Fair, Italy; Encontros da Imagem, Portugal; and Liquida Photofestival, Italy. Her work has appeared in publications such as The Guardian, Beaux Arts Magazine, Photoworks, Riga Photography Biennial 2025, Der Greif, and LensCulture, among others.
Images from Lyoh.
PhotoIreland and Futures
Futures Photography Platform is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, and PhotoIreland is the Irish partner of the platform.
Since 2017, PhotoIreland has been the Irish member of the European Platform of Photography Futures, alongside currently 22 other partner organisations. Futures organises a series of events across Europe within each of its member countries. The aim of the platform is to pool the resources and talent programmes of leading photography institutions across Europe in order to increase the capacity, mobility, and visibility of its selected artists. All participating members of the platform put forward every year 5 artists to be promoted nationally, and that, alongside all the other selected artists, gather at the annual Futures event. It is there that they enjoy a series of professional development events conceived to further their careers and promote their work. The artists are also promoted online, in print, participate in awards, and enjoy a profile page on the Futures website.
Aside from the 5 artists announced above, PhotoIreland has put forward 35 artists in previous years, selected through direct invitation and an open call: Aindreas Scholz, Aisling McCoy, Aoife Herrity, Audrey Gillespie, Barry W Hughes, Becks Butler, Berta Mars, Chris Finnegan, Cian Burke, Ciaran Óg Arnold, Clare Lyons, Debbie Castro, Dorje de Burgh, Emilia Rigaud, Emma O’Brien, Garry Loughlin, George Voronov, Henri Kisielewski, Jamin Keogh, Jialin Long, Leon Nevill Gallagher, Mark Duffy, Mark McGuinness, Megan Doherty, Miriam O’ Connor, Nazlı Yıldırım, Niamh Barry, Patrick O’Byrne, Pauline Rowan, Phelim Hoey, Róisín White, Ronan McCall, Ryan Allen, Sarah Navan, Shane Hynan, Shia Conlon, Tudor Rhys Etchells, Vera Ryklova, Yvette Monahan, and Zoe Hamill.
The current members of the platform are Bienal Fotografia do Porto (PT), CAMERA (IT), Centre de la photographie Genève (CE), Centre Photographique Rouen Normandie (FR), Copenhagen Photo Festival (DK), Der Greif (DE), FOMU (BE), FOTO ARSENAL WIEN (AT), FOTODOK (NL), Fotofestiwal Lodz (PL), Fotogalleriet (NO), Fotograf Zone (CZ), Fundació Foto Colectania (ES), ISSP (LV), Odesa Photo Days (UA), Organ Vida (CR), Photo Elysée (CH), Photo Romania Festival (RO), Photoforum (CH), PhotoIreland (IE), Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Centre (HU), Triennial of Photography Hamburg (DE), and Void (GR).
Futures is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.
Find out more about Futures Photography at futures-photography.com
