Ukrainian-born, Swiss-based visual artist Julia Wimmerlin has spent over a decade navigating the evolving landscape of photography, shifting from travel imagery to contemporary fine art and mixed media.
After leaving her native Kyiv, she lived and worked across Europe and Asia - experiences that shaped her layered visual perspective and cross-cultural sensibility. With academic degrees in Economics and Marketing, Julia began her career in international marketing, later transitioning to photography in 2014. Largely self-taught, she drew on her background in advertising to craft clear impactful visual stories.
The upheavals of the early 2020s profoundly altered her creative path. With the pandemic, travel became impossible; with the war in Ukraine, reality itself became unbearable to photograph. She could no longer face the world through a documentary lens. Julia needed a new way to see—a coping mechanism, a space where she could still create. So she began to invent her own world. What began as an external gaze turned inward, catalyzing a transformation in both process and purpose. Her current work reflects this introspective turn: a search for meaning within uncertainty, and a commitment to investigating the self in relation to an unstable world. Julia's main themes examine identity, perception, and the shifting nature of reality and memory.
This period marked not only a deepening of her conceptual inquiry but also a conscious redefinition of her visual language. Aesthetically, her images have evolved from vibrant, concrete scenes into symbolic compositions that hover between abstraction and figuration. Dream logic, ambiguous figuration, and the poetic use of color and light, become her tools. This transformation wasn’t a stylistic decision—it was a necessity. When the world fractured, she built a parallel one. Dreams became a state of internal displacement where memory, identity, and perception unravel and reassemble. They don’t belong only to the night; they filter into daily life, shaping how she sees and moves through the world. As in Guillermo del Toro's "Pan’s Labyrinth" or Roberto Benigni's "Life is Beautiful", imagination became a protective space—a parallel reality where pain and confusion could be transformed into something beautiful.
Julia's photographs often function as portals—windows into the subconscious, where the fantastical merges with the intimate. Feminine, elusive, and emotionally charged, her works aren't an escape from reality but a way to make space for what remains unseen.
Julia's photographs often function as portals—windows into the subconscious, where the fantastical merges with the intimate. Feminine, elusive, and emotionally charged, her works aren't an escape from reality but a way to make space for what remains unseen.
This path has precedents. In times of rupture, artists often turned inward: Edvard Munch and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, sensing the approach of the First World War, translated collective anxiety and personal turmoil into psychological symbolism; Giorgio de Chirico and Marc Chagall did the same after the war; the Surrealists—Max Ernst and Leonora Carrington—transformed trauma into myth; and later, Francesca Woodman and Duane Michals in photography sought truth in the subconscious. Julia's work follows that same lineage—using imagination and dream logic to rebuild meaning when reality no longer holds.
Julia’s photographs have been published in various prestigious publications including New York Times, National Geographic, GEO, The Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian, Forbes and Le Figaro, amongst others. Her works have been exposed in Canada, Finland, France, Great Britain, Hungary, Japan, Lithuania, Netherlands, Switzerland, Ukraine and USA. She was awarded the title “Photographer of the Year” at the Moscow International Photo Awards and has achieved winning placements in competitions such as the International Photo Awards, Tokyo International Photo Awards, Prix de la Photographie Paris, amongst others. Additionally, she has been shortlisted for the Sony World Photography Awards.
Julia is a resident artist 2025 in Galerie Calabrò, Zurich, Switzerland.
EXHIBITIONS
2025
Group exhibition “Disobedient images”, ProfiFoto Arles (OFF), Arles, France
Solo exhibition of “UNCORNERED” series at the Council of Europe, Strasbourg, France
ImageNation Exhibition, Amar Gallery, London, UK
Art Books Group Exhibition "MYPH na Skladi 2.0", Sklad 5 Art Gallery, Cherkasy, Ukraine
2024
Group Exhibition "Contemporary Ukrainian Photography 2.0", NU ART Gallery, Kyiv, Ukraine
Group Exhibition "100 Women", Ins Blaue Art Gallery, Remscheid, Germany
Group Exhibition "Les Rencontres de la Photographie Marrakech", Marrakech, Morocco
Group Exhibition Swiss Art Week, Galerie Calabrò, Zurich, Switzerland
Group Exhibition "You're Innocent in Your Dreams", ZERO Art Space, Tokyo, Japan
Group Exhibition "Contemporary Ukrainian Photography", V'yava VDNG, Kyiv, Ukraine
Group Exhibition "Restart", Prospekto Gallery, Vilnius, Lithuania
Group Exhibition "Le Langage des Images", Festival OFF Arles, Arles, France
Group Exhibition "Contemporary Ukrainian Photography", NU ART Gallery, Kyiv, Ukraine
Solo exhibition of "UNCORNERED" series, Stadtbibliotek city library, Luzern, Switzerland2023
Solo exhibition during the "We love Ukraine" festival, series "UNCORNERED", Nidau, Switzerland
Helsinki Photo Festival 2023 - Courage, series "UNCORNERED", Helsinki, Finland
Solo exhibition of "UNCORNERED" series, Kornhaus city library and Folks Hoch Schule, Bern, Switzerland
Rotterdam Photo - Exhibition 2023 - Freedom Redefined, series "UNCORNERED", Rotterdam, Netherlands
ImageNation Exhibition, Soho Photo Gallery, New York, USA
2022
Tokyo International Foto Awards Winners' Exhibition, Shibuya Center, Tokyo, Japan and House of Lucie, Budapest, Hungary
ImageNation Exhibition, Galerie Joseph Le Palais, Paris, France
2021
Feature Shoot's “Global Billboard Project” winner, work exhibited on a billboard in Manhattan’s 9th Avenue, New York, USA
International Photography Festival of Atout Sud “Regards de femmes », Rezé, France
2020 - Contact Photography Festival, Broken Reality, Toronto, Canada
2019 - Contact Photography Festival, What Lies Beneath, Toronto, Canada
2018 - Tokyo Midtown Design Touch , « Breathing life into things » exposition Mazda-Vogue, Tokyo, Japan
2017 - International Photography Festival Pil’Ours, Pays de Saint Gilles Croix de Vie, France
AWARDS
2025
ProfiFoto New Talent Award 25/2
Encontros da Imagem Book Dummy Award - Honorable mention
2024
Fresh Eyes Talent ’24 Haute Photographie
3d place winner, Cortona On The Move, "Stolen Language" series
Winner Les Rencontres de la Photographie Marrakech, "Reverie" series
Longlist artist for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2024, Photography, "Stolen Language" series
2023
Tokyo International Photo Awards, Silver, Professional People/Family, series "LOVE. My family" -
ND Awards, Silver, Professional, Fine Art/Nude, series "Transcending Familiarity"
Prix de la Photographie Paris, Gold, Professional, Fine Art/Nude, series "Transcending Familiarity"; Bronze, Professional, Portraiture/Family, series "LOVE. My family"
The Florida Museum of Photographic Arts: 2d place Conceptual, photo "Birth"; 2d place Nature, photo "Connection"; 3d place People, photo "Layers and Meanings"
2022
Moscow International Photo Awards, Photographer of the Year, series "Fresco"
Siena International Photo Awards, Remarkable Artwork, Journeys and Adventures, photo "Glassfish"
2021
Tokyo International Photo Awards, 1st Place, Fine Art, series "Fresco"
Tokyo International Photo Awards, Gold, Nude/Jury's Top 5 Selection, series "Fresco"
2020
Sony World Photography Awards, Shortlist, Natural World and Wildlife, Open competition, photo "Connection"
2019
Trierenberg Super Circuit, Silver, Experimental photography, photo "Joy of Rain"
2018
International Photography Awards, 1st place, One Shot: Harmony, Enhanced, photo "Internal conversation"
Prix de la Photographie Paris, Silver, Portraiture/Self-Portrait, series "I don't cook, but who cares?"
2017
Prix de la Photographie Paris, Gold, Portraiture/Other, photo "Earth or Mars?"
Trierenberg Super Circuit, Gold, Self-Portrait, photo "Redhead"
ART FAIRS
Haute Photographie, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2024
ST-Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France, 2024
