Prize Winners

2025

1st Prize
Gloria Oyarzabal
»USUS FRUCTUS ABUSUS_La Blanche et la Noire«

“The Spanish photographer Gloria Oyarzabal explores power structures and stereotypes in her photo series Usus Fructus Abusus_La Blanche et la Noire. Her work revolves around museums as instruments of national identity formation and the colonial origins of many collections; around publications that cemented notions of “Black and White”; and especially around colonial depictions of women in Western art—sexualized, submissive, and available. These long-established historical narratives clash with current efforts to reassess, confront prejudice, and revise historiography.

Oyarzabal’s perspective draws on the Roman legal concept of ownership: Usus as the right to use an object according to its purpose; Fructus as the right to benefit from it; and Abusus as the right to dispose of it—that is, to alter, sell, or destroy it. Oyarzabal asks: “Ownership, restitution, reparation, recontextualization… Who has agency to give, return, adjudicate, rename?”

We consider this multi-layered series—interwoven through visual dialogues with the history of museum and artistic representation—to be prizeworthy for the way it translates conceptual complexity into consistently outstanding visual form.” (Prof Angela Matyssek)

2nd Prize
Michel Kekulé
»Mutterland«

Mutterland is a fragmentary documentary photography project in which Michel Kekulé explores the social and personal fractures left by German reunification in East Germany. The personal dimension is deeply embedded in Kekulé’s own family history: his grandfather, a knife-maker whose craft disappeared after the fall of the GDR; his mother, who left East Germany in 1990 and returned to the region in the 2010s. The area had some of the highest unemployment rates in the former East. The people Kekulé documents bear witness to ongoing struggles over identity and belonging in a system that dismantled long-standing structures.

The deliberately chosen black-and-white aesthetic places the work in the tradition of documentary photography, evoking classic social-documentary work of the 20th century. The absence of color intensifies the emotional resonance of the photographs: loss, alienation, and uncertainty emerge more starkly, as the reduced aesthetic draws focus to the essential.

3rd Prize
Ashima Yadava
»Papa’s Hand«

Ashima Yadava is a conceptual and documentary photographer and curator. Her work merges artistic expression with social engagement—particularly around gender equity, racism, and social justice. Born in New Delhi, she now lives in San Francisco and works with both analog and digital techniques. She is currently a Fellow of the California Arts Council and a Director’s Fellow at the International Center of Photography in New York.

Her project Papa’s Hand explores familial myths and rituals. The photographic silhouette of the artist’s father, along with his handwriting and handprint, serve as vessels of personal meaning and memory. They question the notion of the traditional family album and raise the broader issue of how much space remains for personal freedom and self-realization—within the framework of inherited family legacies.

Residency Prize
Pasha Kritchko
»Map of Memories«

Pasha Kritchko is a former civil engineer and commercial photographer from Belarus who turned to photojournalism during the 2020 presidential election and mass protests. Using his camera, he documented state violence and human rights abuses following the rigged vote—an act of resistance that eventually forced him into exile. His project Map of Memories addresses the ongoing Belarusian crisis: repression at home, life in exile, and the stories of Belarusian volunteers fighting in Ukraine.

Kritchko photographs out of a deep sense of responsibility, aiming to make visible what the regime seeks to erase. Since 2020, more than 35,000 people have been arrested, and over 400,000 have fled the country. Even in exile, many remain at risk. Those who stayed in Belarus live under fear and isolation; even the smallest acts of defiance are punished. Yet Kritchko refuses to give up hope for a future in freedom. His work is part of a broader struggle for democracy and human rights in an increasingly authoritarian world.

2024

1st Prize
Frank Krems
»Spezial Operation«

2nd Prize
Anja Engelke
»Sleeping By the Dataflow«

3rd Prize
Huseyin Ovayolu
»UPROOTED«

Residency Prize
Nazanin Hafez
»Discrete«

2023

1st Prize
Sebastian Wells (GER) / Vsevolod Kazarin (UA)
»Portraits from Kyiv, Ukraine, April and May 2022«

2nd Prize
Aaron Ricketts (US)
»A Serious Case of Something That Should Probably Be Checked Out But In Reality You’ll Just Try To Sleep It Off (RED)«

3rd Prize
Ivonne Thein (GER)
»disobedient bodies«

Residency Prize
Sitara Thalia Ambrosio
»Fragile as Glass«

2022

1st Prize
Hannah Altman (US)
»A Permanent Home in the Mouth of the Sun«

“I was immediately impressed by Hanna’s images. The powerful aesthetic and the profound, symbolic message her work conveys are a fresh, unexpected narrative that immediately leads to a tale of tradition and contemporary. Her poetic language tells us about the yiddish diaspora through staged portraits, rituals and symbols that re-elaborate old experiences, deeply rooted in the past yet extremely present. There is a kind of silence that flutters through the pictures, we tend to feel the same respect we have in front of a sacred image and at the same time we recognise the tangible sensuality of bodies, with a focus on the female figures. The wonderful use of light and the simple but effective scenes reveal how the experience of exile contain both grief and resilience, a strong identity with a special code that is still relevant today, a treasure of symbols that gives nourishments and stability through the ages.”
(Francesca Cesari, 2022 PORTRAITS jury)