Collage

 invite children aged 8 to 12 to join the 

 this winter. Inspired by Viviane Sassen’s exhibition, participants will get hands-on with the camera and learn to see art and colour in a new way. To complete the festive experience, there will be plenty of time to enjoy hot chocolate and Christmas bread.

Foam

Kerstvakantie: Workshop Collage Maken

From the series I Do Miss Hospital Visit

Shwe Wutt Hmon

Students of Tsinghua University showing their prestige with an a4 white paper.

Xin Li

From the series POST, 2023

Sander Coers

From the series Blaze Orange / High Visibility

Jaclyn Wright

Opening of Loading... Works from the Foam Collection

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Pink Ladies and Pear, 2012

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Wedding day from the series Las Flores mueren dos veces, 2022

Louis Vuitton Jeff Koons Rubens Bag, 2020

From the series Home Leaving One for Another

"Mohlokomedi wa Tora", Scene 2, 2018 

Killa from the series Madre

In a sandstone mine 1 from the series This isn't Divide and Conquer

Dialect, 2020

authenticity (2 CHAINZ) from the series BLACK SNAFU, 2022

Wait from the series We Didn't Choose to be Born Here, 2022

Foam Magazine

Opening of Tyler Mitchell, photo by Almicheal Fraay

About

 is the well-known Photoshop selection tool of the same name. For Xin Li, the tool is much more than a handy feature to edit images. It becomes a means to draw parallels with societal control and censorship during the COVID lockdowns in China.  

The magic wand tool selects areas of images based on colour and hue—allowing smart selection and quick manipulation of images. Enforced with machine learning, it nowadays easily predicts which objects a user would like to see selected. Xin Li uses the tool to distort images, obscuring their original meaning behind layers of other images, often of other artworks.  

For Xin Li, this process symbolises the mechanisms of hiding and revealing facts and fake news, regulating the flow of information and controlling the dominant narrative. Metaphorically captured in the overwhelming fusion of shapes and colours, the visually explosive works tempt the viewer to look what lies beneath the apparent chaos. 

Stuck at home during the COVID-19 lockdown, Shwe Wutt Hmon was unable to visit the hospital for her regular check-ups and scans, necessary because of a life-long health issue. Coming to terms with this limitation, she started scanning her body, as well as flowers and medical records, by herself with an ordinary at-home scanner, creating a variety of abstract self-portraits. 

 that emerged from these experiments, reveal a poetic and symbolic documentation of the ongoing assault of medical procedures and operations on her body. Hmon’s image-making practice strongly ties together process and concept: the withering flowers symbolise the decay of the body and dark colours reflect somber emotions experienced right before scheduled operations.  

Another dimension was added when she moved from Myanmar to Thailand in 2022. Printing her work on local Saa paper, the works received an almost skin-like texture. Again, restrictions–this time due to the delicate paper type–required her to improvise, causing her to print the works small scale at home. The final accumulated process turned out to present a healing capacity: by carefully printing, cutting and sewing her works together, Shwe ultimately was also mending herself.

How does a photograph shape our understanding of the past? 

 is a series of A.I.-generated images, combined with archival images, questioning the construction of memory and masculinity through our image culture. 

In an attempt to grasp the full story of his deceased grandfather and his Indonesian heritage, Sander Coers turned to the artificial intelligence programme 

Feeding archival family photos into its system, he asked the programme to describe them, specifically listing their technical details such as dominant colour tones and type of camera, film and lens. Altering these descriptions allowed Sander to prompt the programme to create new images, yet maintain the exact visual look and feel of the family snapshots. Finally, by blending multiple A.I.-generated images together with the originals, he created a surprisingly intimate, genuine, yet completely fictional family album. 

The way the photos are cropped stands out. Coers used an element of collaging when assembling the final images, in order to emphasise the constructed nature of the photographs, and ultimately, the constructed nature of one’s memory, too. 

 alludes to the ‘afterlife’ of his grandfather, through the photo albums he left behind, as well as to the realm of post-photography: a space where images can be generated without the use of a camera.  

Adobe Stock image

Image from the series POST, 2023

From the series POST

The West Desert, located on the western shore of the Great Salt Lake in Utah (USA), is the ancestral home of the indigenous Goshute people. Though officially public lands, managed by the Bureau of Land Management, this area is largely used for various privatised or military purposes, ranging from mining operations, testing grounds for weapons and improvised gun ranges.  

, Jaclyn Wright visited these cluttered sites, full of discarded targets and shattered clay pigeons. The bullet-holed remains, which she collected, photographed and filmed, are pieced together into performative installations, that reflect on the colonisation of ancient lands by bureaucratic systems.  

By inserting herself into the scene, wearing a skintight bodysuit made out of orange clay pigeons, Wright comments on the hyper-masculine culture of land dominance and cowboy fantasies. The synthetic orange colour becomes symbolic: used to enhance visibility, it signifies the strong opposition and rejection of its natural environment. 

Untitled (BLM arrows I)

From the series High Visibility (Blaze Orange)

Antelope Island (Utah) Buffalo Hunt photograph collection, Digital MSSC782, No. 6, Altered

L. Clyde Anderson photograph collection (1910- 1959), P0158, Box 1, Folder 27, Altered

Charles James Neal photograph collection (1900 - 1920s), P0694, Box 1, Folder 4, Altered

The West Desert is located on the western side of the Great Salt Lake [UT, United States]. Historically, this area has been documented through photography and land surveys, supporting the violent exploitation of the landscape. 

Archives, II

Untitled (grid)

Nearly one-third of the West Desert's 7.7 million acres are used as biological and chemical weapons testing grounds. The remaining areas of the West Desert are open to various uses, including improvised gun ranges.

Collected Targets

Collected Targets, from the series High Visibility (Blaze Orange)

L. Clyde Anderson photograph collection (1910- 1959), P0158, Box 1, Folder 6, Altered

Stansbury Island, the second largest island in the Great Salt Lake, echoes with gunfire and is littered with bullet holes, clay pigeons and improvised targets. The Bureau of Land Management refers to this detritus as "trigger trash".

Found Clay Pigeons

Archives, V

After encountering the powerful texts of psychiatrist Frantz Fanon on the fight against colonial injustice, a series of questions emerged inside Issam Larkat’s mind. Who was Frantz Fanon and how did he become a crucial figure in the liberation of Algeria, as well as the broader movement of decolonialisation? How relevant are his words after seventy years? And, which questions would Fanon have asked in today’s society? 

Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) was an important figure in the global struggle against colonialism during the 1950s, also known under the adopted Islamic name Omar Ibrahim, and recognised for his publications 

(1961). Born on the Caribbean island Martinique, under French colonial rule, Fanon educated as a psychiatrist in France. After the Algerian Revolution in 1954, he joined the National Liberation Front and continued to fight for the freedom of many African nations, including Algeria, until his death in 1961.

Inspired by the profound legacy of Fanon’s visionary ideas, Issam Larkat’s series 

pays a tribute to his thinking by using a distinct style that combines photographs, archival images and hand-made drawings. Larkat cleverly translates his questions into critical collages that depart from his own experience in Algeria, yet simultaneously speak to the universal struggle against injustice and (neo-)colonialism, connecting the shared identities of Algerian, African and Arab people. 

From the series Frantz Fanon, Me, and The Questions

Issam Larkat

is a close observation of performance in everyday life. Which roles do we act out on a daily basis and how does that influence our identities? Using the metaphor of the theatre to separate private (

) spheres, Eleonora Agostini studies her mother’s behaviours, gestures and expressions in her job as a waitress. 

Puzzling together photographs, archival images, moving images and texts into various collages, Eleonora Agostini breaks down the layers of performance one by one, revealing the repetitiveness of gestures, habits and adopted mannerisms used in serving clients.  

The work is also a commentary on the feminist theory of the “gaze”. The restaurant becomes the space where her mother is both the observer and the observed, where parts of her public behaviour as a waitress bleed into her private behaviour of being an individual, woman, and mother. Through her project, Agostini examines this relationship between the female body and the different social roles it performs in different spaces. 

From the series A Study on Waitressing

Eleonora Agostini

Unidentified flying objects, ships floating above the water or identical strangers: the internet holds a vast collection of real-world ‘glitches’: errors or optical illusions that occur in the world around us but cannot be explained rationally. Inspired by movies like 

, these puzzling phenomena spark online discussion, often satirical, about whether we might exist in a simulation, rather than the real world.

, artist duo Andrea Orejarena and Caleb Stein look exactly at this blurry line between fact and fiction, fuelled by the overwhelming flow of images coming our way through our screens on a daily basis. The artists treat the internet as a collective subconscious where evidence for real-life glitches is constantly posted, shared, and reshared. 

The large collection of found internet footage that they built over the years inspired them to search for sites across the United States that reminded them of such glitches. The resulting series of serene yet uncanny landscape photography leave the viewer in an unsettling space, confused between what might be real and what might be fake.

Syntethic Street Collage

Found footage from the series American Glitch

Abraham Lincoln and Drone from the series American Glitch, 2021

Real Bird in Fake Tree, 2022. From the series American Glitch

Desert Facade 1, 2022. From the series American Glitch

Egg Glitch. From the series American Glitch

Very Large Array, New Mexico. From the series American Glitch

Life on Mars Training Simulation, 2021. From the series American Glitch

From the project American Glitch

Cloud Glitch, 2021. From the series American Glitch

Desert Firing Range, 2022. From the series American Glitch

Fake Training Battle in Replica Iraqi Village

From the series American Glitch

Herndon Climb, 2023. From the series American Glitch

California City Paper Roads, Aerial View 1 of 9, 2022. From the series American Glitch

Andrea Orejarena & Caleb Stein

Dine Dine Khasiya Paribe

 is a visual folktale, following the tunes of local songs from the Rajbanshi community in Assam and Bengal, India. Historically, this community has continuously been mis-identified and culturally erased through the crushing weight of colonial bureaucracy. The series documents Akshay Mahajan’s journey in search for what ‘identity’ truly is.

Growing up in Mumbai as a child of the Indian partition, without any knowledge of his own heritage, Akshay Mahajan attempted to construct a new identity: not by birth, but through love. Folksongs, sung by his wife, drew him to north-eastern India, to the Rajbanshi people—bringing back to live a cultural tradition on the brink of obscurity. 

The resulting works are an intuitive and associative exploration about the meaning of ‘identity’. The use of the collaging technique refers to the constructed nature of identity, as something that is continually challenged and reassembled. Mahajan explains: “We are all people of clay, our identities constantly changing, not chained by the borders we have inherited.”

Listen to "Dine Dine Khasiya Paribe" by clicking the play button at the bottom of the exhibition.

From the series People of Clay

Akshay Mahajan

Foam 3h: Sem Langendijk - Haven, 2023

now at Foam 3h

Benjamin Li

List of artists at Foam 3h

Foam Talent Call

Foam Paul Huf Award

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Foam Magazine is an international award-winning photography publication.

Front cover: Faceless, 2023. Image from the series (Inter)Faces of Predictions

Foam Magazine #64 Extremes - The Environmental Issue. Cover: Abundance, 2023

Cover image: Sunil and Sulbha Dhiwar, with Tanmay, Tejasvi, Sourabh, Prachi and Vivek from the Goody family archive, 2002. Image from the series Eat with Great Delight

Cover image: Untitled / After Courbet (L’origine du monde), 2004. Colour photograph, 46x55cm. Photograph: David Rych.

Foam Magazine 61 Talent. Image: Paintings, Dreams and Love © Yushi Li

Foam Magazine #60 Glyphs – The Image + Text Issue

Image from the series EIGHTEEN NINETY 2020 installation detail from the exhibition In Plain Sight

Foam Magazine is published two times a year. Each issue is dedicated to a specific theme that is explored through work by both world-renowned image makers and newer, emerging talents. Accompanying essays, interviews and opinions by experts in the field come together to shape an in-depth and critical conversation.

Crafted with distinct editorial choices, Foam Magazine has been the recipient of several awards for its high-grade graphic design and quality of content.

Phone showing Foam magazine

Image from the series Playing with Visual Fragments

Title

Foam Magazine #59: Histories - The Archival Issue, 2021 

Image from the series After Hours

title

Image from the series Collection of Unjust Enrichment

Image from the series Where We ve Been, Where We re Going Why

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Magazine

Created by Katinka Goldberg in 2014. The artwork is printed on Canson platine fiber rag - glossy - 310g, mounted on dibond and displayed at 100 x 70 cm.

Waves from the Web, 2009

Visible in

, another of Katinka Goldberg’s works from the series 

, what stands out (other than the difference in palette) is the difference in distance. Instead of a close-up that fills the entire frame, 

 shows a small, cut-out photo piece in the middle of a blue plane. On the cut-out, we can distinguish the same kind of hair as in The Hair, as well as a fragment of a face. 

, the series that this photo is part of, is the second entry in a trilogy in which Katinka Goldberg investigates her relationship with her family in a poetic manner. The Swedish term Bristningar literally translates to “striae” (stripes in the skin caused by stretching), but it also has the more figurative meaning of “shortcomings”. The series consists of collages created by Goldberg that depict the tension between closeness and distance and, in a process of healing, deconstruct the body and put it back together. The question she keeps asking herself is: how much can you take away from yourself without disappearing completely? 

The Birdnest, 2014 from the series Bristningar

The Birdnest, 2014

This close-up of curly hair and how the light falls across it give this image an intimate feel. At the same time, it is cut off in such a way that viewers have no idea who this hair belongs to or what the person looks like. With this image, photographer Katinka Goldberg captures a particular emotional mood that is typical of her work. 

The Hair, 2014 from the series Bristningar

The Hair, 2014

Created by Sara Cwynar in 2012. The artwork is a c-print and displayed at 37 x 30 cm.

Collages are a returning photographic approach in Sara Cwynar’s artistic practice. Combining existing objects and artifacts into a new visual assembly, Cwynar plays with the meaning and role that visual materials play in contemporary society. She collects everyday items, once produced for a certain purpose, and recombines them in order to take control of the narrative. Why do people collect things? How do these items interact with our memories? Through this exploration, Cwynar reflects on how images and objects construct our experiences – and the world around us. 

 was part of Sara Cwynar’s first solo-exhibition, 

Studio Pile, 2012 from the series Everything in the studio (destroyed)

Studio Pile, 2012

Created by Stephen Gill. The artwork is a pigment print on Canson Platine Fiber Rag and displayed at 111,76 x 111,76 cm.

What innovative approaches do photographers take towards the medium? Numerous artists like to experiment with photographic techniques in order to transcend the limitations of the medium and thereby to push its boundaries. 

, by the English artist Stephen Gill. By combining different perspectives – such as large versus small, far away versus nearby – Gill plays with the scale of the subjects of his photographs. Adding a measuring tape further enhances this effect by suggesting that the branches in the background are similar in size to the woodlouse in the corner. By highlighting details, Gill invites the viewer to reflect on the relationship between humans and nature and how other organisms understand the world around. 

Untitled from the series Talking to Ants

Untitled 2 from the series Talking to Ants

Look at this work for ten seconds – what strikes you most? The river landscape, the smiling girl, or perhaps the abstract shapes in the foreground? Stephen Gill’s work requires time to sink in. By layering multiple negatives while printing photographs, a collage of different images results.  

But another layer lies across the serene landscape and smiling girl: abstract shapes that resemble the things you see through a microscope. These traces are the result of objects that Gill deliberately places inside his camera, prior to taking photographs. In this way he attempts to create confusion in the scale relations between the different images. This unique approach emphasises the refined and disquieting beauty of Gill’s photography, in which every detail is cast in a new light, in surprising ways. 

Untitled 1 from the series Talking to Ants

 in 2009. Using c-print with an epoxy-layer as the medium, the artwork is displayed at 10 x 15 cm.

visible in

 is derived from the internet. Inspired by 'The Age of Aquarius,’ the astrological belief that the world has entered a new cycle in which love, light and humanity play an important role, the element of water is often used as a metaphor. De Vries has searched for the different ways that water has been represented in different cultures, from Japanese wood engravings to Bob Ross. De Vries brings the variety of collected images together by making collages and presenting them in a new way.

Waves from the Web

Felipe Romero Beltrán - Dialect, 2024

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Selection criteria

Winner Foam Paul Huf Award 2024

Hiền Hoàng

Under an Ideology, part of Asia Bistro - Made in Rice, digital image, 2020

Jury 2024

Hoàng uses food symbolism and unconventional surfaces to demonstrate the stereotypes that exist in Western narratives with regards to Asian culture.

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About Paul Huf

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Other talent inititatives

 in 2013. Using duratrans print in light box as the medium, the artwork is displayed at 100 x 55 x 5 cm.

22.12.2013, from the series All Year Round, 2013

Foam is supported by the VriendenLoterij, Foam Members, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, the VandenEnde Foundation and the City of Amsterdam.

In 2021 Foam receives additional support from the Mondriaan Fund and Kickstart Cultuurfonds

In 2013, the camera of Ola Lanko took 2,000 automated pictures of the IJ every day from the window of her apartment. These pictures were organised in chronological order, creating panoramic ribbons of the passage of time. The start and end of the day mark the frame of the image, producing what looks from a distance like strips of tone and colour that vary depending on the time of day. Close up, however, the details of what has passed before the camera become apparent. The works 22.06.2013 and 22.12.2013 from the overall project All Year Around include all photographs that Ola Lanko took on 22 June and 22 December 2013 - the longest and shortest day of the year.

collage

Collage

Christmas Holiday: Fashion Photography Workshop

Shwe Wutt Hmon

Xin Li

Sander Coers

Jaclyn Wright

About

Xin Li

Shwe Wutt Hmon

Sander Coers

Jaclyn Wright

Issam Larkat

Eleonora Agostini

Andrea Orejarena & Caleb Stein

Akshay Mahajan

Foam 3h

Magazine

The Birdnest, 2014

The Hair, 2014

Studio Pile, 2012

Untitled

Untitled

Waves from the Web

Foam Paul Huf Award

22.12.2013