PORTRAITS – HELLERAU Photography Award 2025
Photographic works on the annual theme “Echoes of Truth” can be submitted for the 10th PORTRAITS – Hellerau Photography Award 2025 from 28.11.2024 to 15.02.2025.
About PORTRAITS – Hellerau Photography Award
The Festspielhaus Hellerau, the focal point of the garden city of Hellerau founded in 1906, has been enthroned on Dresden’s “Green Hill” for over 100 years. The PORTRAITS – Hellerau Photography Award has been based here since 2015. Founded by the then artistic director Dieter Jaenicke and the Dresden journalist Martin Morgenstern and supported by numerous art-loving partners, patrons and sponsors, a major international competition for contemporary portrait photography has since been organized and hundreds of photographic works from over forty countries have been exhibited for the public.
For the Saxon state capital of Dresden, the PORTRAITS Award has now become an important exhibition project that radiates far and wide. The annual finalist exhibition, numerous accompanying events (in cooperation with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the Fotoforum Dresden, for example), guided tours, artist talks and – since 2017 – the annual “satellite exhibitions”, which are organized by smaller galleries and exhibition spaces and frame the main programme, make the PORTRAITS Award the largest European competition for portrait photography. With the help of the main sponsor, the international auditing and consulting firm Forvis Mazars, prizes worth a total of EUR 10,000 can be awarded each year, including a residency prize, which includes an artistic residency at the Festspielhaus Hellerau, the results of which are presented in a separate exhibition the following year.
Two jurors of the first show, photographer Matthias Creutziger and art historian Dr. Katja Schumann, summed up how the PORTRAITS initiators and organizers see the competition, what they look for every year and what they make their curative maxim: “We are looking for psychograms in the form of portraits. We expect a new visual language that attempts to break away from role models. We want to feel what kind of photographer is behind the pictures… In short, we expect to see works by passionate photographers who engage with the medium of photography itself.”
The jury, which includes photographers as well as collectors, curators, photo historians and picture editors and is currently chaired by Hellerau director Carena Schlewitt, changes its composition every year. Former members include Prof. Matthias Flügge, Daniel Blochwitz (CH), Christiane Mennicke-Schwarz or Susanne Altmann and the photographers Julian Röder, Carla van de Puttelaar (NL), Francesca Cesari (IT), Matthew Hamon (US) or Tomasz Lewandowski (PL/D). Curator and art historian Caroline von Courten was recruited for the 2025 edition in November 2024.
The theme of the 2025 competition is “Echoes of Truth”. The plan is to hold the new main exhibition at the Technische Sammlungen Dresden (in the former Ernemann-Kamerawerke industrial building) from June 2025. The satellite program will also be held again. Three satellite exhibitions have already been confirmed: photographer Luigi Toscani, who was already represented in the very first finalist exhibition in 2016, will show his work “Against Forgetting” on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz at the Festspielhaus Hellerau. Romanian photographer Horatiu Sava, who has lived in Germany since 1985, will present his legendary portrait series “Dacia & Chauffeur” in the nEUROPA gallery. In June 2025, the Fotoforum Dresden will also host a satellite exhibition with a guest room artist curated by Martin Morgenstern, which will include a portfolio review (Caroline v. Courten, DER GREIF) for interested photographers for the first time.
Visiting Professor Portrait Photography
In the summer semester of 2023, an international guest professorship for photography was established at the Dresden University of Fine Arts (HfBK) as a further focus of the PORTRAITS project after a long period of preparation. The professorship was made possible by the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation, a non-profit foundation based in Frankfurt am Main, which is dedicated to collecting, exhibiting and promoting contemporary photography, in cooperation with Portraits Hellerau e.V.. The first guest professor, the Egyptian-British photographer Laura El-Tantawy, was also appointed to the competition jury. The common goal of the partners was to expand artistic teaching at the HfBK Dresden in the field of photography through the new international guest professorship. A project-based workshop for master students and advanced students was added to the teaching program. At the end of the semester, an exhibition at the Brühlsche Terrasse Gallery showed the artistic works created by the students during the workshop and attracted a great deal of public attention. The guest professorship is to be advertised again in 2025.