The winner is the young photographer Marianne Kjeldsen

This year, the Alma del Banco award for the best thesis was awarded at  campus Hamburg as part of the BA exhibition and awarding of certificates for the very first time. The winner is the young photographer Marianne Kjeldsen who convinced the jury with her photographic work and installation “Flaschengeist”.

Marianne’s father is a hero. At least that’s how he sees himself in the stories he tells his young daughter.

In her work “Flaschengeist”, Marianne again approaches the child she once was and the father of that time. She takes her father’s self-awareness as an all-rounder literally and stages him as a racing driver, swimming with the sharks, as a helmsman, as a man without fear. 

Dealing with her childhood turns into a cheeky tribute that leaves out any accusations.

This biographical work not only deals with an inner world but also courageously confronts a difficult reference person: one’s own father.

 “Flaschengeist” works with different dimensions. Marianne translates her father’s stories into two-dimensional photography and into three-dimensional objects that are positioned in space in such a way that they create references to the images. And she lets you guess her story behind her father’s stories.

The members of the jury reacted immediately when entering the room: With goose bumps and great joy.

We congratulate Marianne on her great success!

Alma del Banco was a German modernist painter and one of Hamburg’s most popular artists. She was born on 24 December 1863 into an assimilated Jewish merchant family in Hamburg and took her on life on 8 March 1943.

Her work as an artist and networker had a lasting influence on the Hamburg art scene. In 1919, she was a founding member of the Hamburg Secession and from 1920 a member of the Hamburg Artists Association. In 1931, she and other women founded the first German Zonta Club. From 1933, she was persecuted as an avant-gardist and a Jew. In 1933, the Hamburg artists excluded her from their community.

The prize was awarded in cooperation with the  Forum für Künstlernachlässe Hamburg, which owns the estate of Alma del Banco. The aim is to anchor the remembrance and commemoration of important artistic personalities in the consciousness of young artists as an inspiring impulse.