The Georg Koppmann Prize for Hamburg Urban Photography of 2021 goes to the Essen-based photographer duo Sabine Bungert and Stefan Dolfen. Their project "Space is the third teacher" was selected from almost 100 applications by the jury of the prize, which is jointly awarded by the Hamburg Authority for Urban Development and Housing (BSW) and the Hamburg Historical Museums Foundation (SHMH). The aim of the photo project funded this year is a targeted examination of the architecture and special interior design of selected Hamburg schools. The two experienced documentary photographers want to condense different school buildings with their aesthetics of materials, surfaces and colours typical for the respective period in which they were built into their own visual language.
In autumn 2018, the scholarship "Georg Koppmann Prize for Hamburg City Photography" was announced for the first time. The Stiftung Historische Museen Hamburg (Hamburg Historical Museums Foundation) and the Behörde für Stadtentwicklung und Wohnen (Hamburg Department of Urban Development and Housing) award it annually in honour of the Hamburg photographer Georg Koppmann (1842-1909), who continuously documented Hamburg's development into a major city at the end of the 19th century.
It is awarded for an artistic-documentary examination of Hamburg's cityscape and its changes. The work should develop an independent photographic perspective on the city as a living space and place of residence and deal with its processes of change. The metropolis of Hamburg offers living space for a diverse urban society. It is subject to permanent changes that shape the cityscape. Again and again the questions will have to be answered: How does the city function? Who owns the city?
The scholarship is endowed with 8,000 euros and is aimed at professional photographers and graduates of photography courses at colleges, universities and academies.
Every five years, the work of the scholarship holders is shown in a group exhibition.
Hamburg's rapid development into a major city since the Great Fire of 1842 has been intensively accompanied by the then new medium of photography. With the commissioning of the Hamburg photographer Georg Koppmann to continuously document the changes in the cityscape by the building deputation in 1874, this was also seen as a public task. Until his death in 1909, Koppmann recorded such drastic events as the demolition of the Kehrwieder-Wandrahm quarter and the construction of the Speicherstadt in several thousand photographs. The building deputation also collected views of the city from other photographers. In 1928, the photographic documentation of the cityscape was officially institutionalised with the establishment of the Landesbildstelle and continued continuously until 2015. The Prize for Hamburg City Photography is part of this tradition, which is associated with names such as Georg Koppmann, Willi Beutler and Fritz Kempe.
The prize is awarded by the Hamburg Ministry of Urban Development and Housing in cooperation with the Hamburg Historical Museums Foundation.
