Lebohang Kganye awarded €20,000 Foam Paul Huf photography prize

Lebohang Kganye has received the 2022 Foam Paul Huf Award, an international photography honor recognizing emerging talent. The Johannesburg-based artist becomes the sixteenth recipient since the prize's 2007 establishment. She will be granted €20,000 and mount a solo exhibition at Amsterdam's Foam Fotografiemuseum. A jury chaired by Alona Pardo selected Kganye from one hundred nominees, commending her work's clarity, complexity, and ambition. Her practice spans photography, film, installation, and sculpture, frequently drawing from family and collective archives to examine the constructed nature of history and memory. Early explorations include the 2013 series Her Story, where she superimposed her silhouette onto images of her late mother. More recent projects like Tell Tale (2018) incorporate theatrical elements through staged 3D collages. Born in 1990, Kganye is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts at Witwatersrand University. Previous accolades include the Grand Prix Images Vevey 2021/22, the Paulo Cunha e Silva Art Prize in 2020, the Camera Austria Award in 2019, and being a finalist for the 2019 Rolex Mentor & Protégé Arts Initiative. The award honors Dutch photographer Paul Huf (1924–2002), who played a key role in founding the Foam Fotografiemuseum in 2001. This year's jury also included visual artist Oscar Muñoz, Oluremi Onabanjo of MoMA, Anna-Kaisa Rastenberger of the Finnish Museum of Photography, and Demet Yıldız Dinçer from Istanbul Modern.