Foam presents the next generation of image-makers

Photography as a cross-continental space of belonging

For years, Foam has served as a launchpad for emerging photographic talent from around the world. This summer, its ever-growing Foam Talent exhibition returns with its most expansive edition yet. Chosen from nearly 3,000 submissions spanning 107 countries, the selected cohort brings together 30 artists whose work offers a glimpse into the future of the medium.

Many of the projects emerge from a world marked by uncertainty, responding to experiences of violence, displacement, political repression, and fractured identities. Yet rather than documenting these realities from a distance, the artists use photography to carve out spaces of connection and refuge. Through documentary practices, archival research, staged scenes, and experimental image-making, they explore what it means to belong — to a place, a history, a community, or to oneself.

Among them is Lahore-based artist Nad E Ali, whose work lingers in states of solitude and emotional dislocation. Elsewhere, Belarusian artist Sasha Velichko approaches photography through research and archival inquiry. Her work examines political exile, life under authoritarian rule, and the ways memory is shaped, fragmented, and preserved through images. Altogether, these artists reflect on how personal and collective histories continue to echo across borders, and how photography can be a ground for processing and communicating these experiences.

The exhibition opens to the public on 5 June.