Candida Höfer
Käthe Kollwitz Prize 2024
The Cologne-based photographer Candida Höfer will be awarded the Käthe Kollwitz Prize 2024. The prize will be awarded as part of Berlin Art Week in the Akademie der Künste at Pariser Platz. To mark the awarding of the prize, the Akademie der Künste is showing an exhibition (14 Sep – 24 Nov) of works by Candida Höfer.
With this prize, the Akademie der Künste honours one of the most internationally recognized German photographers. Candida Höfer’s oeuvre, which has grown steadily over five decades, is considered part of the contemporary photographic avant-garde. Her large-format photographs depict the public and semi-public spaces like libraries, storage facilities, museums, opera houses – places where people meet and communicate, places of memory and knowledge, relaxation and recreation. The artist herself describes her works not as architectural photography, but rather as portraits of spaces. Höfer is interested in how people are steered, directed or held back by architecture.
Candida Höfer, born in 1944 in Eberswalde, lives in Cologne. After completing a traineeship, studying with Arno Jansen at the Kölner Werkschulen and gaining initial experience in photography in Hamburg, she was accepted into Ole John’s film class at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1973, before subsequently studying under Bernd Becher. In 2002 she exhibited her work at the documenta11 in Kassel; in 2003 she represented Germany at the 50th Venice Biennale, alongside Martin Kippenberger (posthumously). In 2015 she received the Cologne Fine Art Prize, in 2018 the Outstanding Contribution to Photography from the Sony World Photography Awards, and in 2020 the Hommage award of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. Her works can be found in numerous public and private collections in Germany and abroad.
Award ceremony and exhibition opening with Karin Sander, Matthias Sauerbruch, Rolf Tegtmeier, Manos Tsangaris (Akademie President) and award winner Candida Höfer.
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
