13 August 2020

2020 Ellen Auerbach Fellowship for Photography goes to Ferhat Bouda

The Akademie der Künste is awarding the Ellen Auerbach Fellowship for Photography 2020 to the Algerian photographer Ferhat Bouda. Financed from the estate of Ellen Auerbach, the fellowship for international photographers worth EUR 20,000 is awarded every two years. The estate is held at the Akademie der Künste; beneficiaries of the Ellen Auerbach Fellowship are scholarship holders of the JUNGE AKADEMIE. The presentation will take place at Pariser Platz on 25 October. Ferhat Bouda was chosen on the recommendation of photographer Tina Bara and Akademie members Barbara Klemm and Hubertus von Amelunxen. In their jury statement they wrote: “What kind of photography does Bouda produce? Whether document, reportage or art is of no importance, his images of the Berbers are characterised by a moving human quest, an optical scanning that poses the question as to what humanity is with every exposure.”

Ferhat Bouda was born in Algeria (Kabylia) in 1976 and has been living in Frankfurt am Main as a freelance photographer since 2005. The Kabyle are members of different Berber tribes with a common language. His upbringing in the mountain region brought him into contact with the Berber cultural movement at an early age. As an adolescent, he campaigned for the recognition of his mother tongue (Kabylian). As an adult, he finally left his country with the aim of studying film in France “so that my grandmother can one day see films in her own language”. However, after acquiring a photo camera by chance, he developed an enthusiasm for documentary photography and started studying photography in Paris.
Back in his native country, he devoted himself to a long-planned photographic project on the life of the Berber and nomadic peoples and travelled to all countries in North Africa and the Sahel. What moved him are the people and the diversity of cultures in which these peoples live. Bouda’s work has been exhibited at the Visa pour L’Image photo festival in Perpignan (France) and at the SCAM gallery in Paris, among others. He is a scholarship holder of the French Boulat Prize and the Hessian Cultural Foundation. As a member of the VU’ agency in Paris, his works are published in numerous magazines and newspapers.

Ellen Auerbach Fellowship holders of recent years have been Annette Frick (2018), Stephanie Kiwitt (2016), Julian Röder (2014), Natalie Czech (2012) and Anastasia Khoroshilova (2010).

The presentation of the Ellen Auerbach Fellowship for Photography 2020 will take place at 7 pm on Sunday, 25 October 2020 at the Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz 4. Hubertus von Amelunxen will give the laudatory speech, while Barbara Klemm will conduct the artist interview with the laureate Ferhat Bouda.