Poladarium 2016 jury

ARMIN MORBACH: With position instead of pose and a reduced and elegant composition that continuously toys with the subconscious, Armin Morbach’s photos are attracting a growing international audience. His conceptual aesthetic, the way in which he plays with exaggeration and leaves nothing to chance, both surprises and provokes. For the past two decades, Morbach has been an in-demand stylist, defining an international look and a universal understanding of beauty. He has worked with the best photographers, including Michel Comte, Patrick Demarchelier, Karl Lagerfeld, Ellen von Unwerth, and Peter Lindbergh. Driven by a desire to continue developing his artistic expression and to perfect his visions in presentation – his visual language – five years ago he took the next logical step and picked up a camera. Today, he can already boast an impressive portfolio. Accepted into F.C. Gundlach’s photographic collection in 2011 and also included in Gundlach’s curated exhibitions – at the Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow and the Kunsthalle in Vienna – Morbach and his work are now part of the NRW Forum’s “State of the art photography” exhibition and are represented at the “En compagnie de Guy Bourdin” retrospective at the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg. As the publisher and editor-in-chief of TUSH magazine, Morbach also has a regular platform that reflects his visual language, his imagination, and his realities – in short, topics with social relevance.
www.studiomorbach.com

GERD MITTMANN (Vice President Shutterstock International) – Easily clocking the most frequent flier miles of any Shutterstock employee, Gerd joined the team in 2011 and leads our International efforts. He previously worked as VP of International for WeightWatchers.com and started his career in publishing at IDG Communications. When he's not traveling the globe, or visiting our New York Headquarters, Gerd enjoys hiking, skiing, and absolutely everything about Italy. He received a degree in English and Geography from the University of Augsburg, Germany and was raised in a small Bavarian town.
www.shutterstock.com

ANDREAS MÜLLER-POHLE is a Berlin-based media artist and publisher. He studied Economics and Communications at the Universities of Hanover and Göttingen and, in 1979, founded European Photography, an independent art magazine for contemporary photography and new media. His first artistic projects from the late 1970s focused on issues of photographic perception, and later on photo recycling, now also incorporating video. In the mid-1990s, he began exploring the use of digital, genetic and political codes. In his most recent works, he addresses the subject of water with extensive portraits of the Danube River and the megalopolis of Hong Kong. Müller-Pohle’s works have been widely published and exhibited and are included in numerous private and museum collections worldwide. As a publisher, Müller-Pohle has edited the major works of the media philosopher Vilém Flusser, available today in the ten-volume Edition Flusser and including the seminal Philosophy of Photography, which has been translated into over 20 languages. In 2001, Müller-Pohle was awarded the European Photography Prize of the Reind M. De Vries Foundation. He is the author of numerous texts on photo theory, among others on “Visualism”, and has been a visiting professor and lecturer at, among others, the Higher Institute of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium. His most recent project, Hong Kong Waters, was published by Kehrer Verlag and Asia One Books.
www.muellerpohle.net

JEREMY LESLIE runs magCulture, dividing his time between designing, writing and curating. Recent projects include the development of the Writers in Residence series for Visual Editions, creative direction for Luxembourg publisher Maison Moderne and the launch and production of design magazine Fiera. He is a passionate advocate for editorial design, regularly contributing to the creative press and international design conferences on the subject. His latest book ‘The Modern Magazine’ was published in 2013 and the magCulture blog is a key source of editorial design opinion and news.
www.magCulture.com