Opening: Arty Party: Photography Graduates 2025

For Melkweg Expo, photography represents the driving force in the arts. Therefore, the photography selection of ARTY PARTY - a multidisciplinary one-night-only art festival - will be on display from 13 September until 12 October 2025 in Melkweg Expo. On Friday 12 September between 17:30 and 20:30, the exhibition will officially open. Be welcome!

This year we invited international scouts - art professionals from the photograp why and contemporary art world - to handpick each of these photographers from the pool of talented art graduates from all over the Netherlands. So don’t worry if you’ve missed the graduation shows, because at the 'Arty Party: Photography Graduates 2025' group exhibition at Melkweg Expo, you can discover the most extraordinary, surprising and fresh photographic work!

The participating photographers – Jasmijn Vermeeren, Yvela Jessica, Malika Badloe, Tyler Chan, Anastasios Vlachos, Đăng-Vũ Đăng, Andrés Sanjuan, Iyanla Etnel, and Tim Ross – were selected by an international team of scouts: Francesco Rombaldi (1981, Reggio Emilia), curator, editor, and art director, founder of Yogurt Magazine and co-initiator of the photobook store Paper Room and the Charta festival in Rome; Francesca Hummler (1997), German-American artist, researcher, and curator at Der Greif, focusing on themes such as identity and intergenerational trauma in photography; Lisanne van Happen, freelance curator, fundraiser, and editor at The Eriskay Connection, specializing in documentary photography and social issues; and Zineb Seghrouchni, founder and director of DAR Cultural Agency, which collaborates internationally to stimulate new perspectives in art, design, and architecture.

This exhibition is supported by the Mondriaan Fund and the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts.

Meet the photographers: