The PORTRAITS - Hellerau Photography Award was launched at the Festspielhaus Hellerau in 2015. Every year, it honours photographic portrait series from all over the world that are submitted on current topics from over fifty countries. With the help of private sponsors, a total of €90,000 in prize money has been awarded to photographers who use it to realise new photographic projects in their home countries. in 2024, the PORTRAITS - Hellerau Photography Award will host its main exhibition at the Dresden Technology Collections for the fifth time.
The PORTRAITS Award has now been expanded in many ways: Smaller satellite exhibitions revolve around the main exhibition, in which photographers realise solo exhibitions in galleries and exhibition spaces throughout Dresden. in 2022, a PORTRAITS guest professorship was awarded for the first time at the Dresden University of Fine Arts (to the Egyptian-British photographer Laura El-Tantawy). The residency programme, in which a photographer receives an annual working grant at the Festspielhaus Hellerau and then presents her new works in an exhibition, is now also a permanent part of PORTRAITS.
The current theme of the international photography competition is "Singularity". In the temporary exhibition space of the museum and the neighbouring salons and foyers, works by sixteen finalists will be presented, each highlighting fundamentally different aspects of the theme of "singularity". Some works, for example, scrutinise the urge to attract attention in a world of sensory overload. Or they capture special moments in the picture that appear unmistakable and unique. It is also clear that portrait photography itself is developing and changing: Artificial intelligence is being used, and intermedially unbounded pictorial works are being created. The exhibition invites visitors to reflect on contemporary portrait photography. What connects us despite all our differences in a globally networked world?
