PORTRAITS

Photographers can submit their work series for the 11th PORTRAITS HELLERAU Photography Award on the theme of “ESCAPISM” via the PORTRAITS website until 3 May 2026. The jury will award prizes totalling EUR 8,000. The entry fee is EUR 50 for series and EUR 30 for individual images (50% student discount until 29 March). The concept of portraits is traditionally very broad at the PORTRAITS Awards: It ranges from group photographs, artistic experiments dealing with the image of the human being, strong documentary series to nude photography...The winners of the PORTRAITS Awards 2026 will be announced in autumn (1st prize: EUR 5,000, 2nd prize: EUR 2,000, 3rd prize: EUR 1,000). All works from the final round will be presented in the major annual exhibition.

A series of public events and a number of curated solo exhibitions, the so-called “satelittes”, round off the competition program.

Further information: www.portraits-hellerau.com

“In the context of our current political and social reality, “ESCAPISM” is an obvious theme. It is not just an escape; instead, we are thinking about poetic counter-models to the current reality. About economic pressure, loneliness of all kinds, the continent-spanning climate and democracy crises. Escapist images can be read as utopian counter-designs. How do we want to live? How do we want to work? How can communities be conceived differently than through efficiency, competition and increasing the defence budget?

This character of escapism refers back to the founding idea of the garden city Hellerau. As the first German garden city in 1908/09, Hellerau arose from the desire to counter the confinement and harshness of urban industrialisation with new designs for holistic living. At the beginning of the 20th century, the initiators drew on reformist, social utopian concepts that sought to combine living, working, culture and nature. They responded to the constraints of the Wilhelmine Empire and the negative consequences of industrialisation with a self-confident vision of the future. Generous green spaces were to be created in Hellerau, light architecture, communal spaces and cultural education were to be the center of it all! So this was no romantic retreat, but an avant-garde attempt to respond to the social crisis. The experimental housing estate is considered part of the life reform movement and was explicitly conceived as a progressive alternative to the social constraints of the time - both figuratively and programmatically.

I also understand our theme for the year, “escape”, in this forward-thinking way. The link between this theme and Hellerau lies not (only) in the motif of escapism, but also in the idea of creating something new. As a photographic theme, escapism is the curious exploration of “what if?” scenarios. For photographs dedicated to this year's theme, Hellerau can serve as a kind of mirror in terms of content: a garden city that was designed over 100 years ago as a utopian response to its social challenges and now functions as a thinking space for your visual worlds.”

- Martin Morgenstern (DGPh)