GRAZ.- The Camera Austria Award for Contemporary Photography by the City of Graz, which is awarded biennially, will be bestowed on the artist duo Jakob Ganslmeier & Ana Zibelnik in 2025.
The award will be presented by Claudia Unger, City Councillor for Cultural Affairs. The laudatio address will be held by Raimar Stange.
Ganslmeier & Zibelnik (b. 1990, Munich, and 1995, Ljubljana, both live and work in The Hague) are an artist duo working on photography and video projects that center on youth identity formation, particularly the influence of extremist ideologies on young people. Their practice seeks to dismantle the visual language of radical ideologies and investigates how visual art can counteract radical political narratives, while fostering sensitivity toward social issues with conflicting perspectives. Their works have been exhibited at Foam Museum Amsterdam (Amsterdam), Museum of Forced Labor under National Socialism in Weimar (Germany), International Centre for the Image in Dublin (Ireland), and Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana (Slovenia), among other venues.
Jakob Ganslmeier & Ana Zibelnik’s work has been published in Camera Austria International no. 169/2025, together with an interview between the artists and Raimar Stange.
The jury founded their decision to honor Jakob Ganslmeier & Ana Zibelnik with this award on the following statement:
“The jury was profoundly moved by Jakob Ganslmeier & Ana Zibelnik’s empathetic yet methodical dissection of the visual and linguistic paradigms underpinning the proliferation of radical fascist ideologies, both online and offline. Their meticulously researched bodies of work use photography, graphic design, interviews, publications, video installations, and exhibition design to expose the insidious dissemination of masculinist, far-right vocabulary in our daily visual culture through memes, tattoos, TikTok videos, advertising posters, architectural motifs, and ableist communication. Series such as Bereitschaft (2024), Redpilled (2023), and Haut, Stein (2017–20) actively engage with the aesthetic strategies of alt-right propaganda, revealing its embedded continuity with historical lexicons. The duo’s productive collaborations confront the subject humanely, with sensitivity and trust, as if seeking to retrieve the individual from the violent ideology. Their perspective imbues their work with a striking sense of depth, urgency, and humanity, while igniting questions of accountability. Their practice resonated deeply with concerns shared by jury members about the ongoing political shifts in Western culture which threaten the very premises of democracy.”
Members of the jury
• Rosalyn D’Mello, Tramin, intersectional feminist writer, art critic, essayist, editor, educator, and researcher
• Thomas Geiger, Vienna, artist and cofounder of Mark Pezinger Books
• Christian Joschke, Paris, professor of art history and photography at Beaux-arts de Paris, cofounder of the magazine Transbordeur: Photographie histoire société
• Kateryna Radchenko, Kyiv, director of Odesa Photo Days, curator, artist, and researcher of photography
• Christina Töpfer, editor-in-chief, Camera Austria International
The Camera Austria Award for Contemporary Photography by the City of Graz was established in 1989 and is bestowed every two years on an artist who has published a noteworthy contribution in the magazine Camera Austria International and has made an important contribution to contemporary photography. The prize-money is Euro 15,000.
Previous recipients of the Camera Austria Award include
2023: Joanna Piotrowska (Poland/GB); 2021: Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński (AT); 2019: Lebohang Kganye (South Africa); 2017: Jochen Lempert (Germany); 2015: Annette Kelm (Germany); 2013: Joachim Koester (Denmark/US); 2011: Heidrun Holzfeind (Austria); 2009: Sanja Iveković (Croatia); 2007: Marika Asatiani (Georgia); 2005: Walid Raad (Lebanon); 2003: Aglaia Konrad (Belgium); 2001: Allan Sekula (US); 1999: Hans Peter Feldmann (Germany); 1995: David Goldblatt (South Africa); 1993: Seiichi Furuya (Japan/Austria); 1991: Olivier Richon (Switzerland/GB); 1989: Nan Goldin (US).
The award ceremony will be accompanied by the opening of the exhibiton Klara Källström & Thobias Fäldt: The Space Between.
