Documentary Photography Grants 14 of the Wüstenrot Foundation

The Wüstenrot Foundation's Documentary Photography Grants are the most prestigious awards of their kind in Germany. Established in 1994, the grant is aimed at photographers who engage with themes from everyday life and continually redefine the representational functions of photography using contemporary methods. For more than two decades, the Museum of Photography Braunschweig has regularly presented exhibitions of the award winners. The four recipients of the 14th award explore diverse positions within the field of documentary photography, ranging from archival material and artistic and journalistic practices to deliberate staging. Their work focuses on questions of collectivization processes, the subject, body and gender, genealogy, and sociopolitical context.

For the Y-Topia project, Jana Bauch (born 1992) spent two years accompanying climate activists in Lützerath, a village now lost to open-cast lignite mining – not as an outsider, but as part of the group. Her film and photographs focus on the activists' living conditions as well as their hopes and demands for solidarity and a more just future. In Bauch's images, they directly inscribe themselves and are given a voice.

In Soft Pass, Marc Botschen (born 1991) takes his great-grandfather's so-called "ancestral passport" as the starting point for an aesthetic deconstruction. He processes the document in a series of ornamental tableaux and photographs that oscillate between text and image. In many details, they allude to the management of individuality and origin and address processes of self-inscription and over-identification.

In his video installation *Unstable Group* , Dudu Quintanilha (born 1987) explores what it means to form a group with others. His collaboration with non-professional performers in Frankfurt am Main centers on practices from theater and therapy. These practices raise questions about the narration and performance of the self and demonstrate how strongly the individual is shaped by the collective. Quintanilha's video invites viewers to engage in a productive process of uncertainty.

In her ongoing series PICTURES AS A PROMISE (paap), Ramona Schacht (born 1989) processes, fragments, and recontextualizes historical images of female textile workers from Leipzig and Kyiv. This work reflects a contemplation of the clothing and gestures of the women depicted, as well as the status of women's labor in different societies and eras. Schacht subjects the socialist promise of abolishing class and gender boundaries to a photographic revision.

Side events

Opening and summer festival
Fri, July 11, 2025 | 7 PM
Prof. Dr. Tatjana Schneider, Chairwoman, will give the welcoming address.
Museum of Photography Braunschweig, Dr. René Hartmann, Wüstenrot
Foundation, Barbara Hofmann-Johnson, Director, Museum of Photography
Braunschweig, Matthias Gründig, curator of the exhibition for the
Wüstenrot Stiftung

followed by a summer festival with live music

exhibition tour
Sat, 12.07.2025 | 15 pm
with Matthias Gründig and participating artists

FiBS Summer Holiday Workshop
"Photo development completely naturally"
Thu, 24.07.2025 | 11am-17pm + Fri, 25.07.2025 | 10am-16pm

Happy Thursday
Thu, 07.08.2025 + Thu, 4.09.2025 | 13-20 pm
Free admission every first Thursday of the month and
Guided tour with the museum team at 18 pm

Closing event and cultural mile
Sun, 14.09.2025 | 11am-18pm
14 p.m.: Family tour
16 p.m.: Exhibition tour
Photo station with photo bingo and museum bar

Public tours
Every Sunday | 16 p.m.