Lea Abendstein receives the Wolf Suschitzky Photography Prize 2020/21

After a successful submission process with over 140 entries from Austria and the UK, the winners of the second Wolf Suschitzky Photography Prize have been decided.

For their second edition of the prize the Austrian Cultural Forum London invited submissions by emerging photographers on the theme of Life in 2020 . Because of the Covid-19-pandemic we are confronted with a new way of life and new realities. Our everyday life, our work life, our relationships, our leisure activities had to be adapted to a life in lockdown and to social distancing. With this year’s call they wanted to capture these ground breaking changes and challenging times.

Lea Abendstein 's beautiful, multi-layered collages give us a sense of the interior experience of the pandemic lockdown, and its impact on mental health, familial structures and everyday life. Her collages oscilate between the feelings of life in a world before and after the pandemic. Powerful imagery and semantic subtlety are combined skillfully in one work.