Anna Jermolaewa. 2021 Otto Breicha Prize for Artistic Photography

Anna Jermolaewa (Leningrad, USSR, 1970) is the winner of the 2021 Otto Breicha Prize.A self-described “realist”, she has devised a distinctive form of critical engagement with reality that is enlivened by a dark sense of humor. When the authorities launched pro­ceedings against her for anti-Soviet agitation in 1989, she escaped to Vienna, where she studied art history before completing her education at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 2002. Jermolaewa has been professor of experimental design at the University of Arts Linz since 2018. Jermolaewa’s works often develop out of observations of everyday objects. In 1998, she started taking photographs at markets all over the world. Markets—the sociologist Max Weber called them “universal models of so­cial behavior”—are microcosms that, Jermo­laewa believes, reflect society as a whole. Her exhibition in Salzburg is the first to fea­ture a selection of these pictures, together with works like “Back to the Silk Routes,” a video that explores the life stories of Bukharan Jews who emigrated from Uzbekistan and sell their wares on Vienna’s Naschmarkt. Jermolaewa asks them what they miss about their homeland, travels to Samarkand for them, and returns with photographs from the places they long for. Themes such as memory, social dislocation, and fresh starts are visualized in rich detail yet without sentimen­talism.

Otto Breicha Prize for Artistic Photography
The Museum der Moderne Salzburg has giv­en out a biennial award for fine art photogra­phy since 1983. In 2007, the Breicha family endowed the award, which was rebranded “Otto Breicha Prize for Artistic Photogra­phy—Museum der Moderne Salzburg” and now honors a photography artist who was born or lives in Austria. The award is named after Otto Breicha, the founding director of the Moderne Galerie und Graphische Sammlung—Rupertinum, the predecessor institution to today’s museum. Anna Jermo­laewa is the eighteenth winner of the award