The Walther Collection

The Culture Prize 2021 of the German Society for Photography (DGPh) is awarded to the art collector Artur Walther, who since has been collecting the works of photographers from Europe, Africa, Asia and their diasporas since the 90s’ and has significantly contributed to making their work known in the USA and Europe.

Having grown up in Burlafingen, a district in Neu-Ulm, the German-American opened The Walther Collection campus in June 2010. In two typical suburban architectures and a new building with underground exhibition space.

In the exhibition space, the collection presents its extensive holdings of modern and contemporary African photography and video art, recent Chinese and Japanese photography and media art, as well as historical photography from 19th-century photography from Europe and Africa, as well as vernacular photography from all over the world. The Project Space in New York, which opened in 2011, presented — in a dynamic interplay with the main collection — new aspects and experimental projects of the collection. A special exhibition in Arles in 2014 was the first to showcase thematically linked photographs from all areas of the collection; since then, The Walther Collection has been able to present over fifteen such international exhibitions worldwide. The collection includes works by relevant photographers of different cultures and times, including Ai Weiwei, Richard Avedon, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Samuel Fosso, David Goldblatt, Huang Yan, Seydou Keïta, Sabelo Mlangeni, Santu Mofokeng, Daido Moriyama, Zanele Muholi, Jo Ractliffe, RongRong, August Sander, Malick Sidibé, Guy Tillim, and Yang Fudong. Their works often question the socio-cultural stereotypes that form around concepts of race, gender, sexuality, class, and nationality. The investigation of one of the central human questions, that of identity and its social construction, is addressed by The Walther Collection‘s focus on portraiture and, in particular, self-portraiture. Another focus is on specific aspects of the Anthropocene, especially those within landscape, urban, and public space, which serve as a basis for collective action and individuality.

The collector and patron Artur Walther is keen to connect: "Artur not only collects our images, he brings us all together," says the South African photographer and activist Zanele Muholi. In this way, the collector makes an important contribution to broadening Western perspectives by making positions from Africa and Asia visible, as well as to the global networking of photography and the people associated with it.

In collaboration with Steidl Verlag, The Walther Collection also runs an extensive publication program, which includes in-depth research by important theorists, critics, and art historians, in various exhibition catalogs and artists monographs.

Artist monographs on Samuel Fosso, Santu Mofokeng, Zanele Muholi, and Jo Ractliffe, are just a few of the books that have been published. “Imagining Everyday Life,” a comprehensive survey with scholarly essays on amateur and everyday photography, was awarded the 2020 Paris Photo /Aperture Photobook Award for Catalogue of the Year. A total of 17 books have been published to date.

The Culture Prize has been awarded since 1959 and is the most important prize of the German Society for Photography. Since 2020, it has been generously sponsored by WhiteWall. With this award, the DGPh honors living personalities for their significant achievements in the field of photography. Past recipients of the DGPh Culture Award include Ute Eskildsen, Sarah Moon, Helga Paris, Gottfried Jäger, Klaus Honnef, Stephen Shore, Wolfgang Tillmans, Stephen Sasson, Wim Wenders, F.C. Gundlach, Daido Moriyama, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Man Ray.

Press images and the press release can be downloaded from the DGPh-

Website or also via the DGPh office.

Contact:

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie e. V. (DGPh)

Regina Plaar (Press & Public Relations)

Phone: +49(0)221 923 20 69

presse@dgph.de

www.dgph.de