The Documentary Photography Grants of the Wüstenrot Foundation are the most significant award of this kind in Germany. Together with the Photographic Collection of the Museum Folkwang in Essen, they have been awarded every two years since 1994 to young artists from German universities and academies who question the present with contemporary documentary image strategies and forms of representation. 

In the 15th edition of the grants, Nazanin Hafez (*1991), Kristina Lenz (*1992) & Alex Simon Klug (*1991), Malte Uchtmann (*1996), and Hannah Wolf (*1988) are honored. The artists engage in various ways with existing »truths« of the world that concern society and the individual. The documentary strategies and forms used here range from documentary-fictional to AI-generated visual worlds. These are techniques that operate at the edges of the documentary, touching and oscillating without being traditional documentary photographs. 

Image: Kristina Lenz & Alex Simon Klug, Video still from »read my lips«, part of the work »your choices should be grounded in reality«, 2025, video installation approx. 15 minutes, © Kristina Lenz & Alex Simon Klug