Variations on »Home«

Home as an emotional, social, or political space: Since 2017, the Vonovia Award for Photography has presented documentary and artistic works that offer new perspectives on the theme of Home. In times of shifting life realities and evolving feelings of belonging and identity, the Vonovia Award serves as a multifaceted mirror of social and photographic trends. A jury selected seven artists for a master class, during which new works were developed from October 2025 to February 2026. The award ceremony for the eighth edition of the award took place on March 5, 2026; the winners were Michael Kohls in the Professionals category and Maria Bolz in the New Talents category. From May 2 to 17, the works will be on view alongside series by Ute Behrend, Jana Islinger, Christina Stohn, and Stella Weiß & Rosa Burczyk in an exhibition curated by Dr. Reinhard Spieler and students from the Essen Academy of Fine Arts at the Trudi Kreativ Kathedrale in Essen.

Photographer Michael Kohls (*1983), winner of the Professionals category, explores questions of belonging and emotional rootedness in Etrogim against the backdrop of contemporary Jewish life in a country that, for many, long after the Shoah, was considered an impossible homeland. Kohls paints a multifaceted picture of Jewish realities of life between tradition, migration, and secular lifestyles; home here emerges more as a network of (cultural) memories.

With the photo series theydream, Maria Bolz (*1995) won the New Talents Award. In intimate self-portraits, Bolz explores questions of gender identity, self-perception, and self-formation. The body appears as a place that only becomes a home through change and self-assertion. With humor, the images speak of vulnerability, emancipation, and the possibility of finding a home within one’s own body.