Most of my projects begin with research into current events. In this case, the trigger was the enactment of new legislation in France in January 2023, allowing the use of AI-enhanced surveillance (AVS) for any gathering of more than 300 people. This technology is designed to automate crime detection, using algorithms that can flag abnormal behaviour in real-time. Despite reassurances from the ...

“Divine punishment and illegally set fires - Contrapasso by Massimiliano Corteselli uses profound images to explore forest fires in the Mediterranean region, most of which were set deliberately and are surrounded by archaic stories and wild rumours.” Massimiliano studied a semester ahead of me at the Ostkreuz School of Photography in Berlin, and I first encountered his project in its entirety at ...

When I photograph, I arrange the world around me, drawing focus from an inner stillness. This stillness, intertwined with a particular place, is what I want to explore today. The place is a property in Brandenburg, Germany, where I have spent countless weekends and holidays since childhood, since my father used to live there. Once a vacation camp in East Germany, it was rediscovered in the early ...

Exploring fluid identity through the lens of Lê Quyên Nguyễn We periodically invite our alumni, artists we have featured in the past, to share their new work and projects with us. Lê Quyên Nguyễn is a Vietnamese-German visual artist whose work explores the intersections of memory, displacement, and cultural identity through experimental photography and mixed media. She is part of the "Auf nach ...

In 2023, my former classmate Clara Sartor and I were invited to participate in an artist residency in Indonesia. This residency was part of an exchange program organized by Wisma Jerman and the Institut Français, bringing together photography students from Germany, France, and Indonesia. The program included a two-week journey to the Bromo region in East Java. Our goal was to develop projects ...

A quote from my former photobook professor, Thomas Gust, stayed with me throughout my journeys in Egypt’s New Administrative Capital (NAC): “A photographer’s success always depends on their courage.” I thought of this line every time I debated whether to risk entering a site through the front door. Often, I did. I’ve been detained with a friend, chased off construction sites by security with a ...

fata morgana documents the discrepancy between utopia and reality in the New Administrative Capital (NAC), photographed in 2023 and 2024. The planned city for 6.5 million people, built 50 km east of Cairo, shines with government and military quarters, but remains deserted. Workers maintain facades and irrigation systems along the rose-lined streets, while sporadic events preserve the illusion of ...

Freddie Sanders is a London-based artist who works with video game engines to explore themes of masculinity, nihilism, and labour. His practice focuses on moments when frictionless digital technologies falter - becoming stuck, broken, or misused - and reframes these disruptions as experiences that are both paralysing and liberating. By embracing failure and dysfunction, Freddie considers cultural ...

walkthrough memory lane is a recent video work of mine that references the fragmented nature of memory in an age where digital realities increasingly replace physical ones. In this piece, personal memories intertwine with virtual landscapes, and the concept of “real” becomes elusive, if not entirely inaccessible. The work incorporates archival family footage from my hometown Dnipro, Ukraine, ...

Bacci Moriniello on AI-generated images and the photographic We periodically invite our alumni, artists we have featured in the past, to share their new work and projects with us. Bacci Moriniello is an artist duo consisting of photographers and researchers Lorenzo Bacci and Flavio Moriniello, who were featured in our Guest Room curated by Holly Hay & Olivia Hazeldine & Sophie Gladstone in 2020. ...

New Year’s in Ukraine is celebrated as the most joyful holiday, promising a so-called “new year, new happiness”. It is a time for families to come together, share traditions, and look forward to a brighter future. Amidst Soviet citizens’ grey and austere days, New Year’s replaced the banned Christmas festivities of old. Historically, Christmas was forbidden under the Russian Empire between 1914 ...

Slav Gaze is a photo series that reflects on Eastern European culture as it appears on social media, where posts often showcase a fascination with luxury and refinement. Across many post-Soviet countries, there’s a tendency for people to share photos of extravagant meals, stylish outfits, or their latest coveted possessions. These curated glimpses of life focus on a glamorous facade, generally ...

Der Greif in partnership with MPB presents Xiangqi Yin, Guest Room Scholarship winner Der Greif and MPB introduce Xiangqi Yin, who received our Guest Room scholarship from Ruben Lundgren & Yining He, curators of our “Domestic Miracle” Guest Room. His selected image from the series “Power of Mobility” gives room to wonder about time and memory and their impact on the everyday. “Time is like ...

On October 24, we proudly unveiled Der Greif Circle, our new sponsorship program designed to foster a dynamic community of supporters for contemporary photography. The event brought together an eclectic mix of Munich-based friends, cultural enthusiasts, and representatives from various institutions, including our recent collaborators Daniel Veldhoen (Münchner Kammerspiele) and Various Others ...

Sunshine, How Are You? is a personal exploration of childhood memories and the enduring impact of the post-Soviet era on my sense of identity. Born in the east of Ukraine, five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, I was often told I was fortunate to have missed the hardships of Soviet rule. However, as I grew older, I began grappling with a profound sense of disorientation and ...

I’ve always liked to jokingly share with anyone that my works are my “babies” and “children” because I’d like to think our projects represent the manifestation and culmination of all our passion, our experiences, and perhaps even the graces of our inner child. In a way, we birthed an entity after spending years or perhaps decades of working on them, and they represent to our audiences via all ...

I’ve recently begun taking the first steps in a new project titled Taixu, a term meaning “Great Emptiness” or “Cosmos,” referring to a state of void in both space and things. Taixu explores the profound interconnectedness of existence, inspired by the Heart Sutra’s teaching that dissolves the boundary between self and universe. This project examines how our bodies and beings are composed of the ...

Samsara is a visual reflection of my relationship with the balance of the world and its natural elements. First started in 2018 on a trip to the pyres of Varanasi, the work began in earnest in Singapore in 2020 at the time of the pandemic, where the world we once knew changed forever, casting us into the dark ocean of uncertainty and loss. Overwhelmed by the chaos of the world and the endings of ...

How can contemporary Italian identity be defined? Davide Degano “Romanzo meticcio” We periodically invite our alumni, artists we have featured in the past, to share their new work and projects with us. Davide Degano was part of Richmond Orlando Mensah & Daniel Kons’ Guest Room in 2021. “Romanzo meticcio” (Italian for “Mixed Race Novel”) examines Italy’s difficulties in accepting, embracing and ...

Sometime in the second half of 2023 and the first half of 2024, I was part of a wonderful group of international artists in the PhMuseum Folio Masterclass 23/24. Over the following months, our discussions, deliberations, introspections, laughter, and thoughtful exchanges led to the birth of my first official dummy book. Using natural leaves infused into kozo paper to evoke a sense of earth, I ...

Celestial lore and mythical tales converge in the project Ovid's Fasti, an ethereal journey where the beauty of the present merges with the otherworldly realm of ancient Rome. Inspired by Ovid's enigmatic poems in his book titled “Fasti”, penned in the ancient Black Sea city of Tomis upon his exile by Emperor Augustus, this visual odyssey transcends time, beckoning us to embark on a ...

Charting contemporary local voices of Nigeria in photography "Local Voices" is the digital media platform that narrates the creative horizon of image culture, country by country: showcasing the photographers, institutions, and independent players shaping the contemporary imagescape(s). Today, we will introduce Nigeria and its contemporary photographic scene. This article is an exercise in ...

Non technological devices are composite tools made from gleaned natural elements, assembled to mimic the technological devices that populate our daily lives. Between rudimentary productions and science-fiction creations, these objects are as much prolongations of bodies as they are hindrances. Associated with invented artefacts whose use remains to be discovered, they create a fictional universe ...