The sky’s the limit for the next generation of Foam Talent photographers
Amsterdam’s Foam photography museum puts 20 young and forward-thinking artists in the spotlight for its fourth annual London showcase at Beaconsfield Gallery Vauxhall

Gregory Eddi Jones photographed New York’s Twin Towers in the summer of 2001. It was a tourist shot, taken on a trip to the city. A few months later, the towers were gone, but the American artist was left with his picture. ‘It had a very profound effect on me and my understanding of images,’ he reflects. His recent photo-collage series Flowers for Donald, is the artist’s way to respond to the 2016 election, exploring the idea of spectacle, specifically through aesthetics valued by Trump.
Now, Jones is one of 20 young photographers deemed to be outstanding by Foam Magazine, included in an exhibition at Beaconsfield Gallery Vauxhall, coinciding with the opening of Photo London and running until 16 June. As Jones suggests, this year’s show proves that photography now is more about the personal and political experience of spectating than ever. How do we experience imagery? What do photographs make us feel, and how do we interact with them? What kind of power can they have? It might all seem obvious in the Instagram age, but photographers working in very different environments are hyperaware of their context.
From the series Flowers for donald, 2017, by Gregory Eddi Jones.
Eric Gyamfi – who in March was announced as the winner of the 2019 Foam Paul Huf Award – was selected for his ‘Trojan horse-like approach’. Gyamfi has spent time with women accused of practicing witchcraft who have been forced away from their communities in his native Ghana, and queer communities lived on society’s peripheries in Accra. His most recent project, Fixing Shadows; Julius and I, on show in London, is concerned, like Jones, with the evanescent quality of images in the digital age, investigating, ‘what happens to the life of a photograph as it gets sited through time, through death’.
From death, to life. Despite the long stretch of artists who have contemplated both, there has been no significant art on the subject of how we come into the world. Writer and artist Carmen Winant’s groundbreaking My Birth project – comprising more than 1,000 found images of births in the US – presents us with that miracle over and over again. It’s the cyclical nature of life that connect us – and with wit and panache, British artist Maisie Cousins reminds us of this, by taking us on a journey towards our digestive organs.
Ants, 2017, by Maisie Cousins, from the series grass, peonie, bum.
Delcia, 2018, by Durimel, from the series Frères d’une île pas très proche.
Aziade, 2017, by Senta Simond, from the series Rayon Vert.
The element, 2018, by Valentine Bo, from the series Your next step would be to do the Transmission.
Water composition 5, 2017, Stelios Kallinikou, from the series Studies in Geology
Untitled, 2015-18, by Salvatore Vitale, from the series How to Secure a Country
Collage, 2016, by Carment Winant, from the series Pictures of Woman Working
INFORMATION
‘Foam Talent’ is on view from 16 May – 16 June. For more information, visit the Foam website
ADDRESS
Beaconsfield Gallery Vauxhall
22 Newport Street
London SE11 6AY
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
Charlotte Jansen is a journalist and the author of two books on photography, Girl on Girl (2017) and Photography Now (2021). She is commissioning editor at Elephant magazine and has written on contemporary art and culture for The Guardian, the Financial Times, ELLE, the British Journal of Photography, Frieze and Artsy. Jansen is also presenter of Dior Talks podcast series, The Female Gaze.
-
Mercedes streamlines the CLA Shooting Brake to create an aerodynamic electric load lugger
The new CLA Shooting Brake is the first ever electric estate car from Mercedes-Benz, a tour-de-force of quiet technology and elegant lines
-
Willy Chavarria: ‘We’re still so stuck in fashion‘s old guard’
As part of the August 2025 ‘Made in America’ issue of Wallpaper*, we invited three creative powerhouses to comment on the state of the States. Here, award-winning American fashion designer Willy Chavarria speaks on creative resilience, uniting with activist groups, and shaking up fashion’s old guard
-
Six Indian artists reframe the ladies compartment of a Mumbai local train
An exhibition by Method (India) at Galerie Melike Bilir in Hamburg explores a gendered space
-
Shop the gloriously mad inner workings of Gary Card’s brain in London’s Soho
Set designer and artist Gary Card has taken over London's Plaster Store – expect chaos and some really good accessories
-
Meet the New York-based artists destabilising the boundaries of society
A new show in London presents seven young New York-based artists who are pushing against the borders between refined aesthetics and primal materiality
-
Leila Bartell’s cloudscapes are breezily distorted, a response to an evermore digital world
‘Memory Fields’ is the London-based artist’s solo exhibition at Tristan Hoare Gallery (until 25 July 2025)
-
A bespoke 40m mixed-media dragon is the centrepiece of Glastonbury’s new chill-out area
New for 2025 is Dragon's Tail – a space to offer some calm within Glastonbury’s late-night area with artwork by Edgar Phillips at its heart
-
Emerging artist Kasia Wozniak’s traditional photography techniques make for ethereal images
Wozniak’s photographs, taken with a 19th-century Gandolfi camera, are currently on show at Incubator, London
-
Vincent Van Gogh and Anselm Kiefer are in rich and intimate dialogue at the Royal Academy of Arts
German artist Anselm Kiefer has paid tribute to Van Gogh throughout his career. When their work is viewed together, a rich relationship is revealed
-
Alice Adams, Louise Bourgeois, and Eva Hesse delve into art’s ‘uckiness’ at The Courtauld
New exhibition ‘Abstract Erotic’ (until 14 September 2025) sees artists experiment with the grotesque
-
Get lost in Megan Rooney’s abstract, emotional paintings
The artist finds worlds in yellow and blue at Thaddaeus Ropac London