This image stopped me in my tracks. I wanted to know who these boys were, with their intense eye contact and poised bodies, every bit of energy concentrated in their lightly closed fists. This portrait of the three Donoghue brothers is part of Joseph-Philippe Bevillard’s documentation of the Mincéirs, or Irish Travelers, a nomadic ethnic minority for whom boxing is a favorite pastime. I couldn’t help being reminded of another photograph of three young men with equally steady gazes, confident poses, and prominent hands — August Sander’s “Three Young Farmers on the Way to a Dance” from 1914. Even if separated by a century and very different social concerns, both photographs address the potentiality of the young men depicted and what the future might hold for them.

I loved Rhiannon's work because of what it represents for me. It strikes such a chord of freedom in a world that has been prosecuting and causing harm to the Black body for generations upon generations. Intertwined with this freedom comes the power in iconology of the durag that the man in wearing in the frame. Over the last decade, it has gone from just a mere piece of fabric that we use to get waves or keep you hair "looking decent under a fitted" to this idea of Black empowerment as well as bringing one’s whole self. I can go deeper into this, but just an amazing frame that I need to find out how I can get a copy in my house.

Tajette O’Halloran’s series stood out for me in the tension between the suggestion of a gritty documentary project that are in fact tableaux scenes, or what she calls ‘constructed realities’. There is a sustained filmic point of view that progresses a fragmentary narrative apparently drawing on the artist’s own suburban youth. We see allusions to sex, teenage pregnancy, isolation, boredom and poverty — but there is tenderness, intimacy, beauty and longing too. Colour — red for the most part with flashes of orange, blue, pink — pulse through the twilight sequence. I thought of points of reference including Carol Jerrems, Tom Hunter and Trent Parke. The series intrigued me as a kind of re-staged self-portrait conflating memory and picture making, biography and story-telling in a way a work of literary autofiction might.

Michal Solarski’s long-term project “Rest Behind the Curtain” explores the holiday culture in the Eastern European States and the former Soviet Republics and does so with great sensitivity. The photographer invites us to reflect upon the habits and rituals typical of tourism in these regions by using highly evocative imagery. Be the subject an individual or a landscape, the overall feeling is that of nostalgia and a sense of belonging. Each photograph acts as the access key taking the observer into a dreamscape where the border between reality and memory is blurred. It is like finding yourself in a suspended time that has the same power of childhood memories.

Grigralashvili's image from her personal project "Women with Headscarves" struck me as an incredibly strong portrait with a rich underlying narrative. I was pulled in by the subject’s piercing stare, the bright outfit chosen for the sitting, the women’s expressions in relation to the subject, and the grounding contextual environment. As I continued to observe, more details emerged and a story unfolded. That is what a good portrait does — it captures our attention and keeps us engaged, inviting us into the subject’s world.

Alice De Kruijs builds a bridge for the existential matters of the inhabitants of the island state Tuvalu and reinforces the impression of a great distance to the isolated people through a sculptural staging of the portrayed human beings: the exotic person is left to himself or herself, and appears in this way of staging like a human being put on display in a diorama of an ethnological museum.

For me, this portrait by Oleg Videnin is a perfect example of the generosity of photography — it conveys so much within a single frame. There’s a wonderful mixture of joy and pride and delight in the expression on the girl’s face and her body language as she carries a heavy jug of fresh milk from the barn while the inquisitive friendly dog gets excited by what she’s carrying. Then, as you continue to look at the photo, you notice more of the setting and surroundings, including the cart and horse behind her, and the little child in the background coming closer to see what is going on. It’s a sweet moment of real life in a world that seems far away.