Convened by Viviane Esders, the jury has awarded the 2025
Viviane Esders Prize to German photographer Dörte Eißfeldt.
The laureate will be officially announced on November 3 during
a ceremony at the INHA (Institut National de l’Histoire de l’Art)
in Paris and in her presence. She will receive an endowment of
€50,000, while the two other finalists, Oleksandr Suprun and
Bohdan Holomíček, will each receive €5,000 and will also attend
the event. The jury chose to honor an artistic practice sustained
over more than forty years, distinguished by its coherence, poetry,
and deep reflection on the photographic medium—qualities that
particularly captivated the jury’s attention in Dörte Eißfeldt’s work.
This year, the prize received 222 applications from 25 European countries,
including 32% women and 68% men— an encouraging increase in female
applications (28% in 2024) and a broader representation of countries (17 in 2024).
The broader representation of countries (17 in 2024) confirms the European
identity of the prize. 42 of the submitted applications were proposed by the
Nominators, a new group of European photography experts involved in the search
for artists. This community has contributed to the growth of the prize’s European
influence. Viviane Esders warmly thanks them once again for their valuable
contribution.
Tageslichte 67 (Daylight), 2017, Repro eines Tageslichtfotogramms reproduction of a daylight fotogram, archival inkjet print on Hahnemühle Bright White, various sizes © Dörte Eisseldt
, Founder of
the Prize and President of the Jury
Damarice Amao, Photography
historian, doctor in art history,
curator attaché for photography
at Centre Pompidou
Antoine de Galbert, Contemporary
art collector and patron of the arts
Arnaud Lévénes, Founder
and manager of La Capsule,
photographic residency
Robert Pujade, Philosopher,
writer, art critic
Marie Robert, Chief curator
of the Musée d’Orsay, in charge of
photography and cinema
Schneeball 01(Snowball), 1988, gelatin silver print on baryt paper, 61 x 51 cm © Dörte Eisseldt
Born in 1950 in Hamburg, Germany, Dörte Eißfeldt is a prominent figure in contemporary German photography, whose body of work explores both the formal and conceptual potentials of the photographic medium. Trained at the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg, she taught in various institutions before being appointed, in 1991, as Professor of Fine Arts and Photography at the renowned Braunschweig University of Fine Arts, a position she held until 2016.
Eißfeldt’s artistic practice questions the status and processes of the photographic image. “For me photography means working with fragments of reality, experimenting with acquired material in an analogue or digital photographic process with the purpose of establishing a distinct and intense, yet also open connection to the world. Allowing all that is wild, dark, intangible and beautiful in an image to preserve or to achieve its impact, in an open, stimulating and surprising form, very large or very small.”
She manipulates light, chemistry, and paper through analogue and hybrid processes, confronting traditional techniques—solarisation, montage, multiple exposures—with new digital technics.
Among her key series, Generator (1987–1988) and Schneeball/Snowball (1988) have drawn particular attention. In Schneeball, based on a single photograph of a snowball in the palm of a hand, Eißfeldt creates numerous prints, varying the light, scale, and tonality, leading the viewer from a cosmic spectacle—a sphere tumbling in darkness—towards a more intimate experience. Later, the series Haut/Skin (1991) plays with these opposites in the antonyms of soft/hard, light/dark, glossy/matt, front/behind. The pointed edge of a knife dominates the centre of each image, its peak in direct contact with the skin. The point of potential injury marks the thin line between shape and substance, between fact and phantasm, aggression and tenderness. For Agfa Brovira (2011), the backs of exposed prints on vintage paper were digitally photographed in the studio in bright sunlight, a reverence to analogue photography in the indifferent field of the digital. In HimmelHimmel/SkySky (2017), she explores chromatic and spatial illusions through seemingly perfect digitally mastered photos of real skies.
Through these projects, Eißfeldt pursues a profound quest: to go beyond simple representation to reveal photography as a processual object —one whose materiality, technical history, and conceptual tension shape a visual world that is both poetic and reflective, always marked by surprise and intensity.
Since 1971, her work has been exhibited in numerous national and international institutions and galleries. Her photographs are held in several museum collections. She has published twenty artist books, including the recent Stehen Liegen Hängen (2024, Distanz), which lays the foundation for her new project The Experimental Archive, aimed at examining her archive through a process of review and recreation of her work.
www.doerte-eissfeldt.de
Haut (Skin), 1989, gelatin silver print on baryt paper, 61 x 51 cm © Dörte Eisseldt
