About the experts
Gilles Cargueray
Gilles Cargueray supports photographers and brands in their photography projects. He adapts to each project, respecting each photographer’s and institution’s values, visions and artistic directions. The main photographers he is working with are Édouard Elias, Line Brusegan and brands Leica Camera France, Leica Camera AG, Fondation des Treilles, Initial LABO, Imprimerie Escourbiac, les Grands Ateliers de France. He is also supporting and advising young and newly reconverted photographers during portfolios reviews at Les Rencontres d’Arles, Visa pour l’Image – Perpignan, Circulation, Photodays. His expertise is to develop a full project linked to the phtographer’s vision, from the production, post production, edition and exhibitions.
Claudio Composti
Claudio Composti is an independent curator and art advisor with nearly thirty years of experience in photography and contemporary art. Founder of mc2gallery (Milan), he has developed a curatorial practice that bridges artistic research, cultural vision, and a deep understanding of the art market. He works internationally with museums, galleries, and private and corporate collections, advising institutions and companies on high-profile cultural and collection projects. Recent exhibitions include Quayola at the M7 Museum, Doha, and Céline Croze at the PAC, Milan. He is regularly invited as a portfolio reviewer and talent scout at major international platforms such as Les Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles and Face à la Mer. He lives and works between Milan and Paris.
Elina Heikka
Elina Heikka is an art historian, freelance curator, and writer specializing in contemporary photography and the history of photography. She has extensive experience in the museum field, including the Finnish National Gallery and the Finnish Museum of Photography (FMP). FMP is a main photography institution in the Nordic countries. Heikka served as director of the Finnish Museum of Photography from 2007 to 2023. Through her museum work, as well as exhibition, research, and development projects, Elina Heikka is strongly connected internationally. She has published extensively on photography, including research articles, essays and magazine pieces, and has edited numerous publications since the 1990´s.
In 2023, Elina Heikka was part of the curatorial team for the Nordic photo exhibition exploring the welfare state from feminist point of view, Søsterskap, at the Rencontres d’Arles festival, and a year later she was the artistic director of the Encontros da Imagem photo festival in Braga, Portugal, with the theme Colonial Legacies. In 2025, she curated the exhibition Emotional Encounters at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lisbon, continuing the discussion on Europe’s colonial past. In January 2026, a major retrospective of nature photographer Hannu Hautala, A Boy Who Loved Birds, curated by Heikka, opened at the Salo Art Museum in Salo, Finland. Elina Heikka is based in Helsinki and Lisbon.
Wiktoria Michałkiewicz
Wiktoria Michałkiewicz, PhD, is an interdisciplinary expert and arts and culture strategist with extensive international experience in talent development, talent management, global partnerships, and visual art. Alongside her academic achievements—holding five degrees from six European universities, including a PhD in Sociology, she has established a career as a contributing editor for prestigious international magazines like National Geographic, Harper’s Bazaar, and Vogue. Additionally, she has excelled as a film and photography producer, talent agent, and exhibition curator. Michałkiewicz has played a pivotal role in producing and curating exhibitions for renowned artists and collaborating with international festivals and institutions, having worked in various roles with some of the most renowned photography artists, including Deborah Tuberville, James Nachtwey, Sebastião Salgado, Paul Nicklen & Cristina Mittermeier, among others. In one of her roles, she was part of Fotografiska Stockholm and Fotografiska International, contributing to its global expansion to Tallinn and New York. In 2022, Michałkiewicz founded REZO, a consulting agency specializing in global career strategies for visual artists, talent development, international art PR, and art advisory services. Operating globally from Lisbon, Warsaw, and Stockholm, she often works with most prestigious international art events, galleries, organizations, and venues as a contributor, jury member, speaker, and consultant.
Marina Paulenka
Based in Berlin and originally from Croatia, Marina Paulenka brings over 18 years of experience in artistic direction, curating, education, leadership, management, and cultural development—alongside her own artistic practice. Her work spans contemporary visual, digital, and performing arts, with a specialization in photography and new media. Across these roles and mediums, she consistently pushes boundaries, provokes critical dialogue, and engages with urgent global concerns. In 2008, she founded Organ Vita Festival (Zagreb) and managed it until 2019 when she became the artistic director of the photography fair UNSEEN in Amsterdam. In 2022, Marina became the Founding Director of Fotografiska Berlin where she defined its artistic vision, institutional strategy and the public identity of the museum.
Drawing on her post-Yugoslav and Balkan heritage, Paulenka’s curatorial approach is rooted in rich cultural histories and complex socio-political realities. She engages deeply with feminism, identity, gender, human rights, and social justice, as well as the politics of the body, digital representation, and the sociocultural impact of cyberspace. Her perspective is informed by non-Western epistemologies, and she actively centers voices from African, Asian, Latin American, Indigenous, and diasporic communities—foregrounding aesthetics and knowledge shaped by lived histories of resistance, displacement, and care. Working both locally and internationally, she builds bridges between diverse cultural contexts and imagined futures, and is interested in how knowledge is constructed at the intersection of art, science, spirituality, and technology.
Rui Prata (Sesimbra, 1955) is a historian, curator, and essayist with a widely recognized career in the field of photography in Portugal and internationally. He holds a degree in History from the Faculty of Arts of the University of Porto, a postgraduate qualification in Art Direction from ESAP, and a Master’s degree in Artistic Studies – Museology and Curatorship – from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto. He began his professional career as a secondary school teacher before serving as Director of the Museum of Image in Braga (1998–2014), where he played a decisive role in exhibition programming and in strengthening photography as both an artistic and documentary practice. He was also a visiting assistant professor at ESAP and at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Portuguese Catholic University. Between 1987 and 2013, he directed Encontros da Imagem in Braga, establishing it as a leading international photography event. In 2019, he founded Imago Lisboa, further expanding his work in cultural programming and critical reflection on contemporary image practices. He has curated more than one hundred exhibitions, served on juries and honorary committees of major international photography festivals, and has been regularly invited as a portfolio reviewer at prominent events worldwide. Author of numerous essays and critical texts, Rui Prata has consistently contributed to the development of critical thought and historiography of contemporary photography.
