Talent in the Spotlight

The first edition of ‘Talent in the Spotlight’ ran from 5 February to 10 May 2026, featuring work by Lindsey Soetodrono and Jón Helgi Pálmason. The upcoming edition will take place from 21 May to 20 August and will showcase work by Maria Bodrug and Luuk van Raamsdonk. Coinciding with the 12th edition of the international BredaPhoto Festival, which will take place from 11 September to 25 October this year, Yvela Jessica and Aline Papenheim will present their work in the display cases.

Luuk van Raamsdonk is a Dutch photographer who lives in Breda (NL) and has graduated from St. Joost School of Art and Design in 2024. Recently, Van Raamsdonk received the Mondriaan Fund Artist Start Grant and exhibited his work at Melkweg EXPO and IFFR.

In the autumn of 1970, Luuk van Raamsdonk’s grandfather disappeared without a trace. Months passed before he returned, after which he never told anyone where he had been or why he had left. Fifty-three years later, his father had an affair, which revealed long-hidden fractures within the family’s history.

Research in the family archives led Van Raamsdonk to uncover a lead that shed light on his grandfather’s secrets. Elora, Canada: a small, quiet village in Ontario. In this village, his grandfather had an affair with a young woman while his grandmother awaited his return. Van Raamsdonk recognised parts of himself in the mistakes of both his father and grandfather and  decided not to let history repeat itself again.

My Sweet Elora is an ever-developing collection of images from Elora, with which Van Raamsdonk is shaping the collective history and memory of the village while also re-contextualising his own family history. Through archival research and photography, Van Raamsdonk dissects the complex nature of family dynamics and Dutch-Canadian migration, utilising this complexity  to develop his personal identity within the context of his family history.

Maria Bodrug is a mixed-media artist who graduated from the Photography Department of Willem de Kooning Academy in 2025. Her thesis is part of her graduation project In Spite of It All and it is nominated for Blurring the Lines 2025.

When three out of four women in Moldova have experienced psychological, physical, or sexual violence from a partner, family member, or a stranger, it stops being just a statistic. It becomes someone’s sister, someone’s mother, someone’s closest friend.

The project In Spite of It All: Women Who Walked Away grew out of something that Maria witnessed all her life: silence. In a country where traditional and religious family values often place shame on breaking a marriage, where sexual education is almost absent, and where trust in the justice system is fragile, many women are left to carry the weight alone.

During three months in her home country, Maria searched for the faces behind those numbers. It was not hard. People would say, “I know someone,” or “You should make a project about my mother.” That is how Maria met four extraordinary women, Svetlana, Margareta, Nicoleta, and Iulia, who have rebuilt their lives despite violent and traumatic pasts.

This project is woven from conversations at kitchen tables, walks through parks, moments spent cooking, cleaning a grave, sitting in waiting rooms. Their past is still present: in their routines, in their words, and in their eyes. Maria focuses on how they move forward, on who they are beyond the label of a victim. Each path to healing takes a different shape, revealing the relentless strength it takes to rise again and again, despite everything they have experienced.

These encounters eventually evolved into a self-published book, bringing the photographs together with extended interviews and Maria’s own reflections.