Susanne Keichel and Roxana Rios receive scholarship from the Krupp Foundation for Contemporary German Photography 2024
The Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation, in collaboration with the Photographic Collection of the Museum Folkwang, is awarding two scholarships for contemporary German photography. An international jury selected the project proposal Social Justice: School/Labour/Origin by Susanne Keichel and the group of works Echo by Roxana Rios from around 300 applications. Keichel and Rios will each receive 13,000 euros to realise the submitted projects.
Susanne Keichel (*1981, lives in Dresden)
The artist Susanne Keichel has been working on the multi-part photographic work Social Justice over a long period of time and would like to use the grant to complete the trilogy after school and work with the chapter on origin. Influenced by her own biography and a three-year stint as a secondary school teacher during the pandemic, her focus is primarily on people who feel left behind by social injustice in a globalised world. Educational success in Germany depends to a large extent on the social status of the parents. Inequalities are reproduced in German society over generations.
Roxana Rios (*1994, lives in Leipzig)
In photographic, performative and installative formats, Roxana Rios explores the body as a construct and material of social arrangements. In the work complex Echo, Rios examines the role of photography in the (de)construction of traditional identity categories. They explores the question of whether and to what extent photography is a cultural tool for developing pluralistic perspectives on individual and collective identities. In echo’s self-portraits, the relationships between self-expression, attribution and socio-cultural codes are to come together in new constellations. As a transperson, Rios finds themself in a constant dialogue between inner and outer observations.
Members of this year’s jury were:
- Christin Müller, freelance curator, Leipzig
- Anna-Kaisa Rastenberger, Director Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki
- Demet Yildiz Dinçer, Curator and Head of the Photography Collection, Istanbul Modern, Istanbul
- Ingomar Lorch, Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation, Essen
- Thomas Seelig, Head of the Photographic Collection, Museum Folkwang, Essen
The Krupp Foundation has been awarding scholarships for the promotion of contemporary German photography since 1982 in co-operation with the Photographic Collection of the Museum Folkwang. The funding programme is aimed at photographers who develop a photographic project over a longer period of time independently of a commissioned work. Rebecca Racine Ramershoven and Lotte Reimann received the scholarship in 2022. The next call for applications is expected in 2026.