Culture Award 2021 of the German Photography Society

Artur Walther, collector and founder of The Walther Collection art foundation

Handover: 8 April 2022, 11 a.m. at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, K21
Laudatory speech: Prof. Dr. Susanne Gaensheimer, Director of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie (DGPh)

Rheingasse 8-12, 50676 Cologne
T +49 (0)221-9232069
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www.dgph.de

Opening "The Order of Things" in Neu-Ulm, 2015 © Alexa von Arnim

In 2021, the most important award of the German Photography Society (DGPh), the Culture Award, went to the art collector Artur Walther. Artur Walther has been collecting the works of photographers from Africa and Asia since the Nineties. By this means, and also through his journalism, he renders a considerable contribution towards making their works known in the USA and Europe.

"By raising the visibility of photographic positions from Africa and Asia, Artur Walther significantly broadens the west’s perspective and equally helps to expand the global networking of photography and the people associated with it – at an international level," the directors of the DGPh explain, expounding the grounds for their decision to award the Culture Award 2021 to Artur Walther.

The DGPh is delighted to have the privilege of handing over its Culture Award at the opening of the exhibition "Dialoge im Wandel. Fotografien aus The Walther Collection".

Opening "Recent Histories" in Neu-Ulm, 2017
Lebohang Kganye, Artur Walther, Délio Jasse, Mimi Cherono Ng'ok (v.l.n.r.)
© Robert Schlaier

Having grown up in Burlafingen, a district of Neu-Ulm, the German-American chose that location to open The Walther Collection campus in June 2010. Here, in two repurposed typical suburban architectures and a new development comprising a subterranean exhibition space, the collection presents its extensive holdings of modern and contemporary African photography and video art, recent Chinese and Japanese photography and media art, along with historical photography of the 19th century from Europe and Africa and quotidian photography worldwide. In addition, in dynamic interplay with the parent establishment, Project Space (which opened in New York in 2011) presented individual aspects and new areas of interest of the collection until 2020. A temporary exhibition in Arles in 2014 displayed topically associated photographs from all sections of the collection for the first time; since then, The Walther Collection has been able to present fifteen such international temporary exhibitions globally.

Focusing on portrait photography and on self-representations in particular, The Walther Collection attends to the examination of one of the central human issues, that of identity and its societal construction. A further focus lies on specific aspects of the Anthropocene, primarily those within landscape and the urban and public space, which serve as a foundation for collective action and individuality.

Jointly with Steidl Verlag, The Walther Collection runs a comprehensive publication programme, which presents in-depth research by important theoreticians, critics and art historians in exhibition catalogues and artist’s monographs. 17 publications in total have come out so far.

The Culture Award has been handed over since 1959 and is the most important award of the German Photography Society. With it, the DGPh distinguishes living personalities for major achievements in the field of photography. Recipients of the DGPh Culture Award include Ute Eskildsen, Sarah Moon, Helga Paris, Gottfried Jäger, Klaus Honnef, Stephen Shore, Wolfgang Tillmans, Stephen Sasson, Wim Wenders, F.C. Gundlach, Daido Moriyama, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Man Ray. It has been generously sponsored by WhiteWall since 2020.

Further information on the Culture Award of the DGPh and the previous award recipients: here

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