Dr Kristian Häggblom is a Naarm/Melbourne-based artist, academic, independent curator and photobook collector who works with conceptual documentary and expanded modes of photography that have included/combined sound, collected objects, video, text, publishing, performance and commissioned work.

Häggblom completed his PhD, titled Viewing Platforms, in 2014 (Monash University). He has worked extensively in Japan where he made work funded by the Australia Council for the Arts and has undertaken an Australia Council artist-in-residency on Soumenlinna Island in Finland where he researched winter tourism, battle architecture and his Finnish heritage. His work has been exhibited internationally including exhibitions in Australia, Japan, America, Mexico, India and Switzerland.

When Häggblom first moved to Japan in 1999 he co- founded/curated RoomSpace gallery in Omoide Yokocho, Shinjuku, Tokyo. He has curated many cross-cultural exhibitions including the use of alternative spaces such a jail and motel and large-scale events such as Tsuka: An Exhibition of Contemporary Japanese Photography at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, and Evasive Sanctuaries (with Stephanie Rose Wood) at Contemporary Art Platform, Kuwait as part of Speculative Horizons v.1.5. Häggblom is the Higher Education Course Director at Photography Studies College, Melbourne.

Dr Saad Alsharrah a researcher and experimental documentary photographer based between Kuwait and Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. His current interests include using geospatial technologies for visual narratives and long-form expanded documentary methods to depict complex histories and cross-cultural livelihoods. He completed his Master of Arts – Photography degree at Photography Studies College, Melbourne. Alsharrah was a co-initiator of Speculative Horizons and recently established The Third Space Studio a hybrid space for photography, bookmaking, and geospatial storytelling in Kuwait city.

Stephanie Rose Wood is a Naarm/Melbourne-based British collaborative, community-centred storyteller (and question asker). Her work enables narrative expression through documentary photography, education, and curation. Her creative practice is research-driven and explores the complex interconnections between community, ritual, and the psychology of belief. Rose Wood documents the communities around her, discovering stories that are hidden in plain sight. She has an interest in the relationship between photography and text and adapting modes of storytelling across different platforms and audiences.

Stephanie worked collaboratively with Dr Kristian Häggblom on Speculative Horizons v.1.5 to curate the exhibition at Contemporary Art Platform, Kuwait, titled Evasive Horizons and craft the education kit. She is the Undergraduate Course Convenor of the Bachelor of Photography and Digital Imaging at Photography Studies College, Melbourne, and teaches/supervises on the Master of Arts – Photography program.

Brie Trenerry is a Naarm/Melbourne-based artist, filmmaker, curator and educator with a focus on the moving image and new media who has exhibited extensively both in Australia and internationally. She has curated over seventy video exhibitions at MARS Gallery, Melbourne, since its opening in 2014 and is part of the curatorial team for Notfair 2026.

Trenerry‘s recent solo exhibition BABBLE ON at MARS Gallery and a commissioned work in group show DATA MINDS at The Lock Up, Newcastle, explored the profound social, cultural and political implications of artificial intelligence (AI) interventions in mainstream and social media. She has worked as a lecturer in video, new media, sound design, graphic design and fashion film at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA), Photography Studies College (PSC) and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT).

Brie has been the recipient of residencies at The Lock-Up, Newcastle 2024, the Australian Experimental Art Foundation [AEAF] in Adelaide 2015, the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens (AAIA) Contemporary Creative Residency via the University of Sydney 2018 and KdMoFA (Kuandu Museum of Fine Art), Taiwan National University of the Arts, [TNUA] RMIT:ART:INTERSECT 2019.

Trenerry is one half of KBT, working collaboratively with Kieran Boland on large scale experimental film and new media projects. She is represented by Mars Gallery, Melbourne Australia

Naarm/Melbourne-based artist and educator Joseph Blair works across photographic, mixed media, and moving image mediums. His practice examines the social and emotional impacts that emerge from our collective relationships with technology and online spaces. Within this field, he is particularly interested in surveillance and security, artificial intelligence, the dissolution of geographic boundaries in digital realms, and the intersections between the natural and electronic worlds. Joseph runs In Form Library an online specialist bookstore for photography and the arts and teaches at Photography Studies College, Melbourne.

A filmmaker, composer, radio DJ and a son of a geisha, Nishikawa began his career at the BBC in London. After moving to Tokyo, Ken hosted many a radio programme in Japan and the UK. Ken directed and presented a documentary film “Matsuchiyo – Life of a Geisha” which world-premiered at Raindance in 2018. Ken is currently a member of a Belgo-Japanese electronic music duo Nivatak and the chimpo of a Tokyo-based record label Cathrach.

Vivian is a curator, writer, publisher and editor with thirty years of independent practice. She was co-founder of Artmoves Inc. a not-for-profit association that focused on supporting and promoting women’s art and artists between 1988 and 2000. She was the co/curator of Mildura Palimpsest in 2009 and 2011. Vivian has worked on two important publications: editing Interceptions: Art, Science and Land in Sunraysia (2000) and she wrote When You Think About Art: the Ewing and George Paton Galleries 1971 – 2008 (2008).

Masatoshi Kobayashi is a fourth-generation photographer based in Niigata, Japan. His　family photography studio, Photo Studio Kobayashi, has been in operation since 1913. While studying at the Japan Institute of Photography and Film (SHASEN), he won the Lord Mayor of Melbourne’s Award for the photo exhibition “Faces of Osaka/Faces of Melbourne” to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Melbourne-Osaka Sister City Alliance. The award enabled him to transfer to the Photography Studies College (PSC), Melbourne and complete a Bachelor of Photography. After graduating from PSC, he started his career in 2020 with his own studio, specialising mainly in commercial portraiture and school photography. He won the Award for Excellence in the 2023 Fujifilm Professional Photo Contest.

Based in Naarm/Melbourne Alex works primarily in mixed media including animation and moving and still imagery. He is engaged with tactile methods of image-making that include archival sourcing, physical construction using collage, painting, stop-motion and photography to combine visual languages. The resultant work investigates high and low culture, resurgence of the analogue and mundane memory. Alex has worked with local and international bands and artists to create video works.

Sherburn is a Narrm (Melbourne)-based artist whose creative practice focuses on the relationship between the spectator, space and place, through photography, video, installation and text as the acting medium. She is also interested in the intersection between art, ecology and horticulture.

Alrabea is a photographer and printmaker based in Kuwait. His emphasis is on analogue photography, its technical aspects and on alternative printing with extensive experiences at Cairo and Khemia’e Darkrooms. He is a lead collaborator with Khemia’e Darkroom and kuwait-based researcher for Speculative Horizons.

James Takamoto is a Japanese-Australian photographer based in Naarm (Melbourne) and is the daughter of two sculptors. As a child she was surrounded by art which has heavily impacted her way of seeing and making. James Takamoto’s practice utilises an experimental approach with a focus on belonging, history, and place and often aims to give a voice to the underrepresented in contemporary society. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Design from Monash University (MADA) and Bachelor of Photography at Photography Studies College, Melbourne.

Yask Desai is a Naarm/Melbourne-based Australian-Indian visual artist who works with photography, video, archives and text. His work investigates themes of place and collective and individual identity. Desai often combines historical and social research to explore the cultural connections between imagery, history and constructions of identity. He continues to work on multiple projects and his current work Telia, formed the basis of his Master of Arts – Photography degree research at Photography Studies College, Melbourne. The project reimagines the lives of the men who migrated from India to Australia in the later half of the 19th century and worked as hawkers (traveling salesman) selling goods to the inhabitants of regional Australia. Telia was exhibited in a solo exhibition at Blak Dot gallery in Melbourne and produced as a handmade photobook.

Andrew Denishensky has more than three decades experience in the travel industry and has built a career around crafting meaningful, immersive journeys around the world, with a particular affinity for Japan. His passion for travel sits at the core of everything he does, and his photography workshops are a natural extension of that passion—designed to help participants connect more deeply with the destinations they explore. He has future trips planned to India, Hong Kong, Argentina, Uzbekistan and regional areas in Japan. Andrew works collaboratively with Dr Kristian Häggblom to both facilitate and run the Tokyo Research Trips.

Koyuki Häggblom Is a Naarm/Melbourne-based secondary school student and emerging content producer. Her interests are fashion, journalism, photography and spending time at Aireys Inlet and in Japan. She brings a youthful perspective to the public presentation of the Speculative Horizons.

Kimura is a Japanese photographer born in 1982. He was raised in the Chiba prefecture just outside Tokyo. Having studied architecture and anthropology at university, he began his career in 2006. In 2019, a photo book “Snowflakes Dog Man” was published from CEIBA edition, “Mišo Bukumirović” from Reminders Photography Stronghold as a hand-made edition in 2020 and “Correspondence” was co-published from the (M) éditions and Ibasho gallery in 2022. Recently, he has been working on some projects with the theme of “certainty of memory” in Serbia and Japan.

Marlow is an Australian based photographer. His works are held in public and private collections across Australia including the National Gallery of Victoria, Australian Parliament House Canberra and the Monash Gallery of Art. In 2005, he published a book of street photographs, Wounded, (Sling Shot Press). In 2006, he was selected to participate in the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass in Amsterdam. While in 2010, Marlow was one of 45 photographers from around the world profiled in Street Photography Now (Thames & Hudson). He was awarded the International Street Photographer of the Year Award in 2011, and in 2012 won the Monash Gallery of Art’s Bowness Prize. Marlow released his third monograph, Don’t Just Tell Them, Show Them in 2014. In the same year, he was profiled in the Thames & Hudson book, The World Atlas of Street Photography. In 2021, Marlow published his 4th monograph Second City (Sling Shot Press). In 2022, Marlow was commissioned by the Australian Architecture firm Architectus to produce a book celebrating the 21st anniversary of their practice. Marlow is a Leica ambassador and is a member of the photographic collective UP Photographers.