FRANKFURT.- The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation has confered the HfG Rundgang Award 2025 to Len David Oswald for his project “Fulda Gap”. The prize is given to students at the University of Art and Design (Hochschule für Gestaltung, HfG) in Offenbach Main who engage with the medium of photography. As part of its commitment to supporting young artists, the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation has been awarding the €3,000 prize annually since 2010. The award ceremony took place on 18 July during the HfG Rundgang (open house tour) in Offenbach. This year’s jury members were Alexandra Lechner, Managing Director at Fotografie Forum Frankfurt, artist Lilly Lulay and Cornelia Siebert, Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation.

The jury explained its decision as follows: “In his project “Fulda Gap”, Len David Oswald addresses a largely unknown Cold War scenario. The Fulda region, located directly on the former inner-German border between the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), marked the westernmost point of the Eastern Bloc and was therefore considered a potential invasion route for the Warsaw Pact into Western Europe. In the event of an escalation, NATO planned to use nuclear weapons on its own territory to stop enemy troops advancing. Oswald, who has many fond childhood memories of the region from visits to his grandmother and idyllic holidays, uses his camera to explore how this unimaginable threat is still inscribed in the landscape more than 40 years later. He undertakes a 160-kilometre hike from Frankfurt to Fulda and on to the former border, photographing deserted places and forests, always on the lookout for traces of the military presence from that time. The jury was impressed by the powerful imagery, which conveys a diffuse feeling of unease. The well-thought-out concept is particularly noteworthy, as it has both a personal and a historical dimension and seems frighteningly relevant in light of current geopolitical tensions. In addition, the project impressively illuminates how society has come to terms with this threat: the inclusion of the 1970s board game “Fulda Gap” shows how threat scenarios were dealt with in a playful way, too.”

Len David Oswald was born in 2003 in Frankfurt/Main, Germany. He has been studying at the art/photography department at the HfG since 2023 with Professor Martin Liebscher.

Furthermore, the jury gave a special mention to the work “Heiteres aus Kamerun” by Elinor Zoë Karl. In her project, she critically examines German colonial history in Cameroon, finding an innovative approach to working with the medium of photography. She enlarges historical images from the German Federal Archives for pictures (Deutsches Bundesarchiv) that show German colonialists in self-confident poses, cuts them up, and then weaves them back together in the style of old rattan furniture. Through this traditional craft technique, the artist transforms the photographs into unique pieces, thereby subtly negating their supposed reproducibility. At the same time, the permeability of the woven objects symbolises the gradual disappearance of memories of colonial crimes.

Elinor Zoë Karl was born in Frankfurt/Main in 1998 and studies at the art/photography department at the HfG.