The three HGB alumni Viktoria Binschtok, Harald Kirschner and Jay Ritchie receive the BMW Photo Award 2026, which is organised jointly with the Museum der bildenden Künste (MdbK). Congratulations to them!
Viktoria Binschtok, born in Moscow in 1972, grew up in Minden/Westphalia, studied photography at the HGB Leipzig and graduated in 2005 as a master student of Timm Rautert. In 2021, she held teaching positions in the photography class at the Nuremberg Academy of Arts and in 2025 at the Offenbach University of Art and Design. Viktoria Binschtok lives and works in Berlin. The jury statement says: "Viktoria Binschtok is one of the most prominent voices in conceptual photography. Her works stimulate and irritate visual perception in equal measure and thus enable in-depth reflection on the effects of digital images in a rapidly changing visual culture." (Florence Bourgeois)
Harald Kirschner was born in Reichenberg (Liberec/Czech Republic) in 1944 and grew up in Altentreptow. From 1963-1965 he completed an apprenticeship as a photographer in Loitz. He then studied photography at the HGB Leipzig until 1973. From 1973 to 1981, Harald Kirschner was a trainee and lecturer at the HGB. He has been a freelance photographer since 1981 and worked as a photographer for book publications at Pro Leipzig e. V. from 1993-2003. Harald Kirschner lives and works in Leipzig. "Harald Kirschner is one of the most important photographers of his generation in Leipzig. He has documented the city and its inhabitants like no other for more than 45 years, making a significant contribution to its visual memory." (Philipp Freytag)
Jay Ritchie, born in Hanover in 1992, studied at the Ostkreuzschule für Fotografie und Gestaltung in Berlin from 2013-2016. He then studied photography at the HGB Leipzig, graduating in 2022 as a master student of Tina Bara. Jay Ritchie lives and works in Berlin. "Based on sensitive and multi-layered questions of identity, Jay Ritchie succeeds in exploring photographic and human boundaries that signify growth. You can see in his strict, classically composed images that he takes people seriously in their depths. It's about existential issues: who am I, who was I and who holds me?" (Cihan Çakmak)
Every two years, the BMW Photo Award Leipzig supports artists who either have a biographical connection to Leipzig and the region or who consciously engage with the city and its surroundings in their artistic work. The prerequisite is work in the medium of photography or related visual media.
The prize is endowed with €5,000 per artist and is linked to a joint exhibition including a catalogue at the MdbK. BMW and the MdbK have several aims in awarding the prize. Firstly, it is a general strengthening of Leipzig as a centre for photography and the photographers working here. In particular, young positions and those that, in the jury's view, have not yet been adequately recognised publicly should be highlighted. In addition, the prize is an expression of the high status of photography at the MdbK and the trusting cooperation between the museum and BMW in this field that has lasted for over 20 years. And finally, the exhibition of the prize-winning works is intended to make an artistic contribution to society's self-assurance about the city's past and present and possible perspectives for its future.
The award ceremony will take place on 10 June 2026 as part of the opening of the exhibition (11.06.-13.09.2026).
The three prize winners will be selected by a rotating international jury. Each jury member will propose three entries. The jury for the BMW Photo Award Leipzig 2026 met at the MdbK in early December.Its members were Florence Bourgeois (Director Paris Photo), Cihan Çakmak (artist, Berlin), Adrian Sauer (artist and professor, Leipzig/Bielefeld), Sabine Schmid (Curator Villa Stuck, Munich) and Philipp Freytag (Curator of Photography and Media Art MdbK).