Anna Jermolaewa (1970 Leningrad, SU) is the winner of the 2021 Otto Breicha Prize. She describes herself as a "realist" and her examination of reality is both critical and profoundly humorous.
After proceedings were initiated against her in 1989 for anti-Soviet agitation, she fled to Vienna, where she studied art history and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 2002. Jermolaewa has been a professor of experimental design at the University of Art and Design Linz since 2018. Jermolaewa's works often develop from the observation of everyday things. She has been taking pictures of markets all over the world since 1998. Markets - the sociologist Max Weber called them "general patterns of social action" - are microcosms that reflect society for Jermolaewa.
Anna Jermolaewa, from the series Volga etc., C-prints, 2008 © Anna Jermolaewa, Bildrecht, Vienna 2023
In Salzburg, a selection of these images will be shown for the first time and placed in the context of works such as "Back to the Silk Routes": In this video, she explores the fates of Bukharian Jews who have emigrated from Uzbekistan and sell their wares at Vienna's Naschmarkt. Jermolaewa asks them what they miss about their homeland, travels to Samarkand for them and brings back footage of their places of longing. Themes such as memory, uprooting and new beginnings are brought to life in an unsentimental and detailed way.
Otto Breicha Prize for Photographic Art
Since 1983, the Museum der Moderne Salzburg has awarded a prize for photographic art every two years. Since 2007, this prize has been sponsored by the Breicha family and awarded as the "Otto Breicha Prize for Photographic Art - Museum der Moderne Salzburg" to an Austrian or Austrian-based photographic artist. The prize is named after Otto Breicha, the founding director of the Moderne Galerie und Graphische Sammlung - Rupertinum, the predecessor institution of today's museum. Anna Jermolaewa is the 18th recipient of the prize.
December 1, 2023 to April 1, 2024
