Interestingly enough, the Hariban Award 2020 covers an incredible range: from documentary narrative approaches to conceptually systematic sequences and sociocritical questions about historical, ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The focus on b/w photography underscores a mode of perception that seems to have been lost in our everyday life: colour dominates the world, black and white is hardly used anymore. And so this different colour space of grey tones, black and white creates a completely new calm to deal with questions about the nature of the medium. The quality of the submissions surprised me with a view from Germany. Many works pursue new perspectives on the medium, analyze it medially, question it as an image medium or place above the examination of photography: What do we actually see? Which world is constructed through photography? And what role does the viewer play in this? No other medium is able to formulate the everyday visual culture with such a profound examination of society in this way. I am very happy to have been part of this jury.

BIO
Felix Hoffmann is an art historian and art theorist, and is currently Head Curator of the C/O Berlin Foundation, where he is responsible for exhibitions, programmes and strategy. With passion, curiosity, and a talent for improvisation he has brought C/O Berlin from being an idealistic project to an internationally renowned institution characterised by his idea that photography and moving pictures will become the dominating medium of the existing visual strategies. He is the initiator of C/O Berlin’s Talents program for young photographers and art critics, and has acted as curator of numerous international exhibitions including Nan Goldin (2009), Robert Mapplethorpe, Peter Lindbergh (2011), Gordon Parks (2014) or Araki (2018), and group shows like The Last Image. Photography and Death (2019) or The Uncanny Familiar – Images of Terror (2011). He has also published numerous books and texts.

Lucy Gallun
Associate Curator in the Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, New York

There were many extraordinary candidates for the Hariban Award competition this year. The submitted work ranged from sensitive portraits to constructed still lives to landscapes that demonstrated keen concern for the environment. There were tight bodies of work that engaged with highly precise topics and other projects that covered vast, wide-ranging themes. Singling out specific proposals was particularly challenging, given the diversity of approaches. And in so many cases, I could envision the possibilities that working with Benrido might afford these artists. I am heartened by the idea that even in this uncertain time, artists will benefit from the opportunities for exploration generated by this award. Even those whose work was not in the end selected have no doubt impacted their art practices just in the act of applying, as they were prompted to imagine how such a unique prize might expand their art-making.

BIO
Lucy Gallun is Associate Curator in the Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. She has curated or co-curated multiple exhibitions for the Museum including Being: New Photography 2018; Projects 108: Gauri Gill (at MoMA PS1); Unfinished Conversations: New Work from the Collection; Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency; Ocean of Images: New Photography 2015; Soldier, Spectre, Shaman: The Figure and the Second World War; and Art on Camera: Photographs by Shunk- Kender, 1960–1971; and collaborated on many others. Lucy is also co-editor of Photography at MoMA, a three- volume history of photography at the Museum. Prior to joining the Department of Photography at MoMA, Lucy was the Whitney Lauder Curatorial Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Philadelphia, and she was a Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program (ISP).