PROFIFOTO NEW TALENT AWARD
Discover the five winners of the PROFIFOTO NEW TALENT AWARD 2026
Twice a year, Canon and ProfiFoto present the prestigious PROFIFOTO NEW TALENT AWARD in cooperation with WhiteWall and Hahnemühle, aiming to highlight and support exceptional photography projects.
Under the guidance of Thomas Gerwers (ProfiFoto) and with WhiteWall Creative Director Gunnar Wagner on the jury, the five winners of the 26/1 competition round have now been announced: Laura Knipsael, Marie Sueur, Javier Arcenillas, Liz Obert, and Katrina Dobbermane.
Their works demonstrate the diversity of contemporary photography, spanning poetry and explorations of identity, political statements, urban analysis, and art-historical references.
The awarded series will be showcased – printed by WhiteWall – in selected exhibitions.
Laura Knipsael – “MOLTITUDE”
Laura Knipsael (Netherlands) explores the fluidity of identity in her series MOLTITUDE, examining the tension between digital self-construction and real-life appearance. Five visual “looks” act as selectable “skins” of a virtual world, serving as metaphors for self-staging, transformation, and shedding old layers.
Christian Popkes praises the work as an “impressive fusion of fashion staging and profound identity analysis,” where photography becomes the stage for an existential metamorphosis. Particular emphasis is placed on the consistent translation of the biological concept of shedding into digital avatars, along with the powerful use of color symbolism as a statement for individual freedom.
Marie Sueur – “Murmures de l’âme”
Marie Sueur (France) creates a poetic visual space in Murmures de l’âme, hovering between dream, memory, and inner experience. She works with light, blur, textures, and symbolic elements to make emotional states visible.
Bettina Scheerbarth describes the series as a “quiet visual language” that condenses fragile moments into compelling metaphors with formal consistency, opening a contemplative space. Between perception and projection, it becomes a visual meditation on the unconscious as the last place of unfiltered freedom.
Javier Arcenillas – “STREET CARTOGRAPHY”
A critical approach that impressed the jury: Javier Arcenillas (Spain) focuses in STREET CARTOGRAPHY on urban structures, where light not only illuminates but also shapes. In the style of street photography, he transforms cities into a climatic landscape of graphic zones, dark voids, and geometric contrasts.
Guido Krebs highlights the “remarkably consistent visual language,” which makes heat zones perceptible and allows the city to be understood as both a sensory and climatic landscape. The series becomes a visual cartography of urban atmosphere, where light not only illuminates but also forms.
Liz Obert – “American Bodegónes”
Liz Obert (USA) combines art-historical references with contemporary consumer critique in American Bodegónes, inspired by Dutch Vanitas still lifes and Spanish bodegones.
Gunnar Wagner notes: “With American Bodegónes, Liz Obert questions our relationship with food. Powerful, old-master-style compositions clash unsettlingly with contemporary fast food. She fills her tables with rich, provocative narratives, making the images compelling—and appetizing—on both first and second glance.”
Katrina Dobbermane – “Constructed.”
Katrina Dobbermane (Latvia/France) examines the human body as living architecture in Constructed. Her series merges geometry, movement, and repetition into a visual study of self-formation, discipline, and aesthetic ideals.
Nadine Dinter comments: “Katrina Dobbermane’s Constructed impresses with its formal rigor and consistently high artistic quality. It captivates not only through precise storytelling but also evokes associations with the imagery of Robert Mapplethorpe and Bastian Woudt. With a confident, sharply defined visual language—sometimes a strikingly detailed staging, sometimes an evocative, almost sculptural representation of the body—Dobbermane succeeds in presenting the human body aesthetically as a resonance space for sport, art, and the future.”
Photography unfolds its true power in the perfect print. With WhiteWall as a partner, the NEW TALENT AWARD ensures that the works of emerging talents are seen and appreciated at the highest quality. A single image thus becomes an experience that unites creativity and craftsmanship.
- Thomas Gerwers (Editor-in-Chief, ProfiFoto)
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About ProfiFoto / NEW TALENT AWARD
The PROFIFOTO NEW TALENT AWARD is presented twice a year by Canon and ProfiFoto in cooperation with WhiteWall and Hahnemühle. The competition does not seek finished works on a given theme but rather images that spark curiosity and invite further exploration. The award supports photographers in turning their “images in the mind” into reality.
Additionally, from the ten winning works of the two competition sections each year, the jury selects the three best, awarding cash prizes totaling €3,000. All winning works are published in ProfiFoto and displayed as WhiteWall prints in a group exhibition.
The jury for round 26/1, moderated by Thomas Gerwers (ProfiFoto), consisted of Bettina Scheerbarth (Hahnemühle FineArt), Nadine Dinter (PR expert for photography), Christian Popkes (Curator, Fotogipfel Oberstdorf), Guido Krebs (Canon), and Gunnar Wagner (WhiteWall).
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