23 August 2024
Candida Höfer
Käthe Kollwitz Prize 2024
Exhibition, 14 September – 24 November 2024
Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz
Invitation to the press tour
Friday, 13 September 2024, 10 am
Exhibition halls open from 9.30 am
With
Anh-Linh Ngo, Vice-President of the Akademie der Künste
Karin Sander, Director of the Visual Arts Section
Moderation: Anke Hervol, Secretary of the Visual Arts Section
Please register for the press tour by e-mail to presse@adk.de
The Cologne-based photographer Candida Höfer will be awarded the Käthe Kollwitz Prize 2024. To mark the awarding of the prize, the Akademie der Künste is showing an exhibition of Candida Höfer's current work at its Pariser Platz location. On display are large-format photographs from her work complexes Weimar (2004–2006) and Berlin (2020–22), including of the Komische Oper with its neo-baroque interior from 1882 and the Neue Nationalgalerie (1965–1968), Berlin’s landmark of modernism.
Akademie President Manos Tsangaris will award the prize to the artist on 13 September 2024; the laudatory address will be given by Matthias Sauerbruch, member of the Architecture Section of the Akademie der Künste. The exhibition opening will take place after the award ceremony.
With this prize, the Akademie der Künste honours one of the most internationally recognised German photographers. Candida Höfer’s oeuvre has developed over five decades and is part of today’s photographic avant-garde. Her large-format photographs depict the public and semi-public spaces found in landmark historical libraries, museums and opera houses – places of human interaction, communication, memory and knowledge, relaxation and recreation. The artist herself describes her works not as architectural photography, but as portraits of spaces. Her focus is on how people are steered, guided or restrained through architecture.
Candida Höfer (b. 1944 in Eberswalde) lives in Cologne. After training at the Schmülz-Huth photo studio in Cologne (1963–64), she studied under Arno Jansen at the Kölner Werkschulen (1964–68) and set up her photographic practice in Hamburg. Having been accepted into Ole John’s film class at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1973, she switched to photography in 1976 and remained a student of Bernd Becher until 1982. In 2002, she exhibited at documenta11 in Kassel, and in 2003, she represented Germany at the 50th Venice Biennale alongside a posthumous presentation of Martin Kippenberger’s work. Höfer received the Cologne Fine Art Award in 2015; the Sony World Photography Award’s Outstanding Contribution to Photography in 2018; and the Hommage award from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in 2020. Höfer’s first solo exhibition in 1975 was at the Konrad Fischer Galerie in Düsseldorf. Since then, she has realised numerous solo shows and projects worldwide, and her works can be found in a variety of public and private collections both in Germany and abroad.
A catalogue brochure with a text by Matthias Sauerbruch will accompany the exhibition.
The prize, the exhibition and the accompanying publication have been co-financed for 30 years by the Kreissparkasse Köln, which funds the Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln.
As part of Berlin Art Week 2024
Candida Höfer
Käthe Kollwitz Prize 2024
Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz 4, 10117 Berlin, Tel. 030 200 57-1000
Award Ceremony and Exhibition Opening
Friday, 13 September 2024, 6 pm, free admission
with Candida Höfer, Karin Sander, Matthias Sauerbruch, Rolf Tegtmeier, Manos Tsangaris
Exhibition
14 September – 24 November 2024
Tue – Fri 2 – 7 pm, Sat, Sun, public holidays 11 am – 7 pm
Admission € 10/7, free admission for under 18s, Tuesdays and the first Sunday of the month
>> Press photos here
>> Press contact: Dorothea Walther, tel. 030 200 57-1531, walther@adk.de