Past and Present

For twenty years now Wüstenrot Stiftung has, at two-year intervals, been bestowing awards in the field of documentary photography on outstanding graduates from German universities. Of the forty prize winners from the last twenty years, seventeen current projects were selected for presentation in the coming exhibition and in a catalogue.

The distinguishing factor for these projects is their common interest in the political, cultural and social structure of reality. While numerous works concern themselves with the legacy of utopias from a past modern age, others in turn address aspects of migration movements in our contemporary world or examine the new social milieus in our society. The exhibition introduces a juxtaposition of different perspectives and pictorial languages, and reveals the diversity of formal approaches in contemporary photography. The presentations oscillate between single images, tableaus, linear series, wall images hung by association, and artists’ books.

With photographs, videos and book projects by Frank Breuer, Andrea Diefenbach, Chris Durham, Espen Eichhöfer, Sibylle Fendt, Ulrich Gebert, Kirill Golovchenko, Margret Hoppe, Verena Jaekel, Matthias Koch, Maziar Moradi, Wolfgang Müller, Linn Schröder, Kim Sperling, Andreas Thein, Christian von Steffelin and Tobias Zielony.

In cooperation with the Wüstenrot Foundation.