The jury founded their decision to honour Joanna Piotrowska with this award on the following statement: “We are pleased to announce that Joanna Piotrowska has been selected as the recipient of the Camera Austria Award for Contemporary Photography by the City of Graz 2023. In making their decision, the jurors of this year’s prize responded to the artist’s ability to evoke the uncanniness of our relationships to our bodies, to architecture, and to one another. With a distinctive and recognizable visual language, Piotrowska’s images consistently make the experience of photography strange – an accomplishment that is all the more worthwhile for her masterful use of the medium. The jurors additionally highlighted the generative tension produced between Piotrowska’s black-and-white images, and her inventive installation techniques which, in engaging with color, consistently animate the experience of photography in new and unexpected compositions. The jury gave rigorous consideration to the equitable distribution of funding and the impact that this prize would have on its recipients’ practice and career. We look forward to seeing how the support and recognition offered by this award will influence the next chapters in Piotrowska’s already noteworthy body of work.”

Joanna Piotrowska (b. 1985, Warsaw, PL, lives and works in London, GB) examines the human condition through performative acts and the construction of multiple “social landscapes” using photography, performance, and film. Recent solo exhibitions include Entre nous, Le Bal, Paris (FR, 2023); Sub Rosa, with Formafantasma, Phillida Reid, London; Sleeping Throat, Bitter Thirst, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover (DE, 2022); Thump, Museum Insel Hombroich (DE, 2021); FROWST, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (2020); Stable Vices, Kunsthalle Basel (CH, 2019); and All Our False Devices, Tate Britain, London (2019). Piotrowska’s work was included in The Milk of Dreams at the Venice Biennale 2022 (IT), Manifesto Of Fragility, 16th Lyon Biennale 2022 (FR); and We don’t need another Hero, 10th Berlin Biennale, Germany (2018). Piotrowska’s work is held in various collections including: Museum of Modern Art, New York (US), Centre Pompidou, Paris, and Tate, London.

The Camera Austria Award for Contemporary Photography by the City of Graz was established in 1989 and is bestowed every two years on an artist who has published a noteworthy contribution in the magazine Camera Austria International and has made an important contribution to contemporary photography. The prize-money is Euro 15,000.

Joanna Piotrowska’s work has been published in Camera Austria International no. 146/2019  and was accompanied by a text by Alexander García Düttmann.

2021: Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński (AT)
2019: Lebohang Kganye (ZA)
2017: Jochen Lempert (DE)
2015: Annette Kelm (DE)
2013: Joachim Koester (DK)
2011: Heidrun Holzfeind (AT)
2009: Sanja Iveković (HR)
2007: Marika Asatiani (GE)
2005: Walid Raad (LB)
2003: Aglaia Konrad (BE)
2001: Allan Sekula (US)
1999: Hans Peter Feldmann (DE)
1995: David Goldblatt (ZA)
1993: Seiichi Furuya (JP/AT)
1991: Olivier Richon (CH/GB)
1989: Nan Goldin (US)