Akinbode Akinbiyi (*1946 Oxford, England) has won the Hannah Höch Prize for 2024. Featuring some 120 photographs drawn from several series – two of these on show in Germany for the first time – the exhibition at the Berlinische Galerie offers insights into an oeuvre covering five decades. This first solo show for a German museum is the result of close collaboration with the artist.

The photographer and author of global renown, who has lived and worked in Berlin since 1991, wanders the megacities of this world capturing life on the streets. Berlin, Brasília, Durban, Lagos – urban space is his workstation. He experiences it as an “interminal labyrinth” or, as he phrased it in 2009, “a maze of never ending streets that coalesce into uncountable pathways”. Akinbiyi photographs what he observes, predominantly in analogue black-and-white. His pictures are visual metaphors rich in nuance, addressing cultural change and social exclusion but also the political, social and architectural impact of colonialism. In these images, he conveys a world view that shuns stereotyping and depicts without discrimination.