Jury
For each exhibition, the jury is composed by Bénédicte Blondeau, founder and curator of PEP, together with the curator(s) from the partner organization and invited artists. For the METAMORPHOSIS exhibition, jury members include Ghazaleh Mirahmadian and Siméon Grégoire (La Nature) and Bénédicte Blondeau (PEP).
Ghazaleh Mirahmadian
Ghazaleh Mirahmadian, born in Tehran and based in Liège. She is an interior architect with a master’s degree in architectural heritage from Saint-Luc Liège. For the past five years, she has been part of the organization of La Nature Festival in the Belgian Ardennes, where she curates multidisciplinary program, manages artistic project calls, and designs signature structures.
Siméon Grégoire
Siméon, born in 1997, is a Belgian multidisciplinary artist. He studied graphic design, industrial design, and interior design in Liège before moving to Brussels in 2022.
Member of NoName since 2019 (La Nature Festival, Hors-Piste Festival, etc.), he now leads visual design and communication for the collective. Alongside this role, Siméon works as a freelance designer and art director, continuously evolving in his creative practice.
Bénédicte Blondeau
Bénédicte Blondeau [b. 1986] is a lens-based artist born in La Louvière, Belgium. She studied Photography at Ar.co [Lisbon, Portugal] and Academy of Fine Arts [Ghent, Belgium] and earned a Master’s degree in Applied Communication at IHECS [Brussels, Belgium].
She participated in various exhibitions and talks across Europe and her work has been published in numerous magazines internationally. In 2019, her first photo book "Ce qu'il reste" was released by the Lisbon-based publisher XYZ books. "Ce qu'il reste" is a finalist for Photo España’s best book award, received an honorable mention at the DGLab Book Design Awards and has been shortlisted for the ADAGP MAD Revelation Artist Book Award and the Stiftung Buchkunst "Best Book Design From All Over the World". In 2021, her first monographic exhibition took place at Photoforum Pasquart in Switzerland.
In 2022, her work was part of two exhibitions curated by Anne Immelé at the photo biennial of Mulhouse and at the Valletta Contemporary Gallery in Malta. During the following years, ongoing versions of her series "Ondes" were featured at G37 gallery in Berlin (solo), Contretype in Brussels and Haus am Lützoplatz in Berlin.
In 2024, her second photo book "Ondes" was released by XYZ Books and shortlisted for the Fotofabrica Prize at Diecixdieci Festival (Italy). The series "Ondes" is part of the "Those eyes, the eyes, they fade" exhibition of the Mulhouse Photo Biennial at the Fine Arts Museum and is one of the selected projects to be exhibited at the French photo festival "Itinéraires des photographes voyageurs" in Bordeaux in 2025.
Bénédicte Blondeau also worked as a documentary movies director and is currently curating photography exhibitions for PEP - the Photographic Exploration Project - that she founded in Berlin in 2019.
Former jury members are:
Anne Immelé
Anne Immelé, Ph.D., is a photographer and exhibition curator. In 2013, she co-founded the BPM - Mulhouse Photography Biennial, for which she serves as the artistic director and curator for specific exhibitions. Her curatorial work often relies on a thorough spatial understanding of venues to reveal the associations sought between exhibited photographs.
Immelé's curatorial research stems from her Ph.D. thesis, entitled Constellations Photographiques, presented in 2007 at the University of Strasbourg and published by Médiapop Éditions in 2015. Her active interest in the challenges of exhibiting contemporary photography in the present media landscape is also reflected in articles published in Art Press magazine. She is the author of several books featuring her own photography, including WIR with philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy (Filigranes Éditions, 2003) and Jardins du Riesthal (Médiapop, 2023).
Her photographic work is regularly exhibited, such as in 2019 at the Fondation Fernet-Branca (Saint-Louis France). She has been working in the Mediterranean basin on the Melita project. Supported by the CNAP, this project examines the notion of refuge since antiquity, based on the crossing of the Mediterranean. Several exhibitions are scheduled for 2024, including during the Maltabiennale.art, at Eglise Palerme (CNAP program Suites), at Stimultania galerie Strasbourg, and during Jaou Photo Tunis.
While her photographic work is exhibited internationally, she also teaches at the HEAR (Haute École des Arts du Rhin) and lives and works in Mulhouse.
Norbert Wiesneth
Norbert Wiesneth, born in Munich in 1972, has lived in Berlin since 1997. He studied art, photography and multimedia in Italy and Spain until he completed his studies at the University of the Arts in Berlin with Rebecca Horn in 2000.
Numerous exhibitions in Germany and abroad attest to his artistic activities, which deal primarily with the transformation of places. He showed his works at Kunstverein Tiergarten - Berlin, La condition publique - Lille (F), Kunstbureau - Paris (F), Northern University - Ohio (US) NCCA- Kaliningrad (RUS), Galerie C-Keller - Weimar, The Brno House of Arts - Brno (CZ), Goethe Institute - Milan (I), among others,
In 2007 he received the IBB prize for photography.
He is a founding member of the Axel Obiger Gallery.
In 2009 he was appointed a member of the German Photographic Academy.
In 2012 he founded PhotoWerkBerlin.
Since 2014 he has been working as a curator at Kommunale Galerie Berlin.
In addition to his work as director of PhotoWerkBerlin, he gives courses at BBK-Berlin, Bauhaus University in Weimar, Vermont College of Fine Art.
Rüdiger Lange
Rüdiger Lange is the artistic director of the Berlin based gallery for contemporary art, Loop – Raum für aktuelle Kunst. He is currently curating B-Part Exhibition.
Gretar Gunnlaugsson, Rebecca Cuglietta and Manon Anglade
Gretar Gunnlaugsson, Rebecca Cuglietta and Manon Anglade participated to the PEP jury for the "New Talents 2022" and '[PEP] PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPLORATIONS °01' exhibitions as members of 254forest.
More info:
Antonio Rodriguez
Antonio Rodriguez (Guatemala) is a photographer based in Berlin.
With a wide experience working as a photographer in America, Europe and Africa, Antonio has always focus his practice into story telling. His projects explore social issues such as migration and territory through the activation of archive imagery.
Liesl Pfeffer
Liesl Pfeffer is a visual artist from Brisbane, Australia, living and working in Berlin. She has a Bachelor of Photography from the Queensland College of Art (2005) and a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) from Monash University (2017). Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in Australia and internationally since 2005, including at Jarvis Dooney Galerie and Lite-Haus in Berlin, and Ortega y Gasset, Wassaic Project, Trestle Projects and Chashama in New York.
Jeroen De Wandel
Jeroen De Wandel (°1980, Ronse, lives and works in Ghent) studied photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent. He uses photography as a starting point to create new images from all sorts of material (photographic or otherwise) from his personal image archives, which tie in with his themes and interests, often with a social slant.
Main themes are manipulation (in all its aspects), our brain/memory, time and the use of the medium photography, whether or not in relation to painting. His work is a cross-pollination between photography, mixed media and installation; in recent years the focus of his work has shifted from photography more towards collage, installation and sculptural work.
His work has been shown at FoMu in Antwerp and the Rietveld Pavilion in Amersfoort, among other places. He was selected for Futures (European program for young artists) and Festival Circulations 2020 (FR).
Valérie Leray
Valérie Leray, born in 1975, lives and works as an independent photographer in Orléans and Berlin. She graduated as a Master in Photography and Multimedia at the Paris 8 University. The main topic of her work is the question of presence/ absence of History in contemporary photography. In 2008, her project “Nomads” was awarded the label of “The European Year for Intercultural Dialog”. It also got a contribution by the Delegation of Foreign Affairs and a purchase by the Centre France Region (1% artistic). Her works was exhibited in different venues like the Europäischer Monat der Fotografie (Berlin), Fotoseptiembre (Mexico D.F), Pyngyao International Photography festival in Paris, Berlin, Orléans, among others.
Since 1999, Valérie Leray is the Artistic Director of La Mire (ex Lumen) in Orléans (FR), a non-profit organization aimed at promoting photography and video. With the same organization she founded the AIR Program called A ROOF ABOVE YOUR HEAD set up in Berlin.
Erwan Quaegebeur
Born in Lille in 1984, Erwan Quaegebeur had adopted Brussels as its home since 2016. After 10 years of experience in international trade, he co-founded Modern Blocks, an online platform dedicated to contemporary photography. Avid and curious of novelty in the image, his priority is to make contemporary photography more accessible but also to offer better visibility to talented photographers throughout a new space of exhibition.
Ali Kanaan
Ali Kanaan, born 1988 in Lebanon, is a Berlin based photographer with a passion for documentary photography, street photography and portrait photography mainly within the music and film industry.
Together with his brother Mo Kanaan he runs the film & photo production company Kanaan Brothers.
Lynn Klemmer
Lynn Klemmer is a multimedia artist working with video, sound, textiles and digital tools. She studied Fine Art (Media) & Visual Culture at the National College of Art and Design, Dubin (2017). Her practice attempts to approach the margins defining and differentiating concepts, media and atmospheres, and to tentatively push beyond them. Lines become blurred and new perspectives arise; clear demarcations pass into intricate networks, in which no single point can exist without reference to its relations. Lingering at this crossing, the artist seeks to create an audiovisual space for thinking and sensing the possibility of hybrid realities.
Joseph Warren
Joseph is a British born artist whose interest in the performative and sculptural qualities of photography guides his practice. Hugely inspired by experimentation, he uses the photographic medium as a tool of intrigue; allowing him to inspect and investigate the complex relationship between subject and object. As a graduate of Photographic Arts from the University of Westminster, London, he now lives and works in Berlin.