20 October 2016

Ellen Auerbach Fellowship for Photography, 2016
Awarded to Stephanie Kiwitt

In 2016 the Akademie der Künste is awarding the Ellen Auerbach Fellowship for Photography to Stephanie Kiwitt. This advancement fellowship for young, international photographers, endowed with 20,000 euros, is financed from the estate of Ellen Auerbach and awarded biannually. The estate is part of the art collection and archives of the Akademie der Künste and the Ellen Auerbach Fellowship is one of several grant programmes administered under the auspices of the JUNGE AKADEMIE. The award will be presented on 16 November 2016. Recent Auerbach Fellowship recipients include Julian Röder (2014), Natalie Czech (2012) and Anastasia Khoroshilova (2010).

Stephanie Kiwitt, the photographer and fellow chosen this year, uses work groups, series or artists’ books to explore topics such as daily life in cities, fragile urban structures, consumerism, the commodity cult and body culture. She stages her photographic compositions both inside and outside, and they often teeter between reality and imitation. Kiwitt was recommended for the fellowship at the suggestion of Akademie members Ute Eskildsen, Elfi Mikesch and Helga Paris. The jury praised “her sharp and simultaneously subtle observation of our urban lifestyle. In alternation between full shots and details, the photographer winds her way through the urban present, capturing planned signs and subjective traces in the city. […] Her images are not static, critical statements, but rather free-flowing discoveries drawn out of the colourful visual imagery of modern-day urbanity.”

Stephanie Kiwitt was born in Bonn in 1972; she participated in a correspondance course at the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava, Czech Republic, 199498; studied photography at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst (HGB) in Leipzig from 19972004, where she also became a master student with Timm Rautert, 200407. In 2002 she received the Kunstpreis der Stadt Bonn; followed, among other grants, by a DAAD in Marseille in 2006; a studio grant at the Wiels Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels, 2009; the Stiftungspreis für Fotokunst, Stiftung Alison & Peter Klein in 2011; and a Kunsten en Erfgoed work grant in Brussels, 2016. Her solo exhibitions in recent years include shows in Leipzig, Cologne, Karlsruhe, Pforzheim, Ghent, Prague and Arles. http://stephaniekiwitt.com/

Award Presentation
Wednesday, 16 November 2016, 7 pm, free admission
Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg 10, 10557 Berlin, Germany
With Kathrin Röggla, Barbara Klemm, Ute Eskildsen, the prize-winner, et al.