This panel brings together women and queer photographers whose work explores desire, intimacy, and self-representation through fashion, art, and documentary practices. Here, the female gaze is not a theory but an encounter. A way of seeing and being seen shaped by closeness, choice, and authorship.
Across these projects, the body and appearance are not fixed symbols but relational spaces where meaning emerges through gesture, styling, and proximity. Desire is approached as lived and reciprocal rather than spectacular, grounded in trust, imagination, and the freedom to construct one’s own image.
Bettina Pittaluga is a French-Uruguayan photographer trained in photojournalism who later studied sociology at the Sorbonne and earned a master’s degree at CELSA. She discovered photography at 14, documenting friends and family. Her luminous, natural style focuses on intimacy and emotion, highlighting people often underrepresented in media. Working exclusively with medium-format film, she centers her work on human stories, exploring love, tenderness, and social justice while challenging violence, hatred, and exclusion. Her approach blends documentary rigor with poetic sensitivity and empathy.
Clara Belleville is a French photographer, born in 1996, living and working in Paris. After a three-year course at Gobelins in 2014, she began working in fashion photography while pursuing personal projects such as Acte I - Mémoires, Conte d Été, and Entre nous. Finalist at Hyères Festival (2022) and Picto Prize (2023), her work has been exhibited at Villa Noailles, PhotoVogue Festival, and Le 104. Entre nous is part of the Gen-Z exhibition at Photo Elysée until January 2026 and was published as a book by Stromboli Editions in 2022. She appeared on the cover of Dazed Spring 2023.
Hillary Foxweldon is a New York based portrait photographer. Her work centers around her friends and loved ones, with a primary focus on women and family relationships. She graduated from bard college with a bachelors degree in photography. She now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Juno Seunghui Joo is a South Korean photographer whose practice reinterprets Korean rituals and folklore through staged imagery and symbolism. Educated in both South Korea and the UK, Joo holds a BA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London, and an MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art. Her work has been exhibited internationally, further extending the dialogue between her Korean heritage and international audiences. Recent exhibitions include Rotterdam Photo Festival 2025, The Royal Photographic Society’s IPE 165 (Under 30s Award winner), and the 10th Daegu Photo Biennale Fringe Festival 2025 in South Korea and more.
Mirielle Rohr is a Berlin-born visual artist and photographer based between Paris and Berlin. She earned her Master’s in Photography at ECAL (Lausanne) in 2025. Working across analogue photography, sculpture, ceramics, and AI, she explores how femininity, beauty, and identity are performed and perceived. Using staged gestures, symbolic environments, and dreamlike narratives, Rohr’s work examines emotional states and cultural phenomena. Published widely, she was a 2024 Picto Award finalist and will join the FUTURES residency in Amsterdam, 2026.
Nicole Ngai is a Singaporean photographer and director based in London. Her work explores intimacy, kinship, and the shared exchange between photographer and subject. Focusing on the body as a site of identity, sensuality, and post-colonial representation, her images question who looks, who is seen, and how tenderness shapes the gaze.
Rhiannon Adam is a queer Irish photographic artist working between London, New York, and South Africa. Educated at Central Saint Martins and Cambridge, she explores social injustice, outsider communities, and power through long-term, research-led projects that mix photography, archive material, video, and audio. Selected for the 2021 dearMoon civilian lunar mission, she now works on Rhi-Entry and projects on post-Apartheid South Africa. Adam has received the Sony Award, Meitar Award, and Photographers’ Gallery New Talent award, and authored three books.
Moderated by
Charlotte Jansen in a British Sri Lankan author, critic and journalist. She is the photography critic for the Guardian (UK) and writes on art and photography for numerous international publications including The Financial Times, The New York Times, British Vogue and ELLE magazine, among others. She is the author of two books on photography: Girl on Girl (LKP, 2017) and Photograpy Now (Tate/Ilex, 2021). Jansen is the curator of Discovery at Photo London.
