A torn photograph, tucked inside a Bible, became the genesis of Lindokuhle Sobekwa’s I Carry Her Photo with Me, now crowned the 2025 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize winner. Announced at London’s Photographers’ Gallery by Caleb Azumah Nelson, the £30,000 award recognises the South African artist’s resolute excavation of memory, loss, and the ghosts of apartheid’s aftermath.
The project began with a single, defaced image: Sobekwa’s sister Ziyanda, her face scissored from a family portrait—the only trace left of her. Years after a childhood accident drove her to disappear, her fleeting return and subsequent death propelled Sobekwa to piece together her life through fragments: snapshots of strangers she’d met, handwritten notes, and the visceral absence where her likeness should be. MACK’s 2024 photobook transforms these remnants into a tactile elegy, where personal grief collides with the unresolved disappearances haunting post-apartheid South Africa.
Jury chair Shoair Mavlian praised Sobekwa’s “powerful simplicity,” which resonated alongside shortlisted artists Rahim Fortune, Cristina De Middel, and Tarrah Krajnak (each awarded £5,000). For Deutsche Börse Foundation director Anne-Marie Beckmann, the work’s “raw poetry” exemplifies photography’s capacity to “stitch wounds across generations.” Sobekwa, a Magnum Photos member since 2022, now joins past winners like Deana Lawson and Lebohang Kganye—proof that the most intimate stories often cast the longest shadows.
Lindokuhle Sobekwa (b. 1995, South Africa) was introduced to photography in 2012 through the Of Soul and Joy Project in Buhlebuzile High School in Thokoza township. His photography mentors there included Bieke Depoorter, Cyprien Clement Delmas, Thabiso Sekgala, Tjorven Bruyneel and Kutlwano Moagi. In 2013, Sobekwa joined Live Magazine as a part-time photographer. He has exhibited work at Kalashnikow Gallery in South Africa and with No Man’s Art Gallery in the Netherlands and in their pop-up exhibitions in South Africa, Iran and Norway. In the past year, his work has been shown internationally at Paris Photo by both Goodman Gallery and Magnin-A gallery. Sobekwa joined Magnum Photos in 2018 and became a full member in 2022. He has undertaken assignments in Kenya and South Africa, as well as giving lectures about his work and photography in South Africa.
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Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation
The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation is a non-profit organisation, based in Frankfurt/Main, Germany, dedicated to collecting, exhibiting and promoting contemporary photography. The Foundation is responsible for the development and presentation of the Art Collection Deutsche Börse, which now comprises over 2,400 photographic works by around 170 artists from 38 nations. The Foundation shows several public exhibitions a year in its exhibition space in Eschborn near Frankfurt am Main. It supports young artists through awards, scholarships and the annual Talent programme of the Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam Foam. The Foundation also works on exhibitions with international museums and institutions, as well as creating platforms for academic dialogue and research on photography.
Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2025 runs at The Photographers’ Gallery until 15 June.