Alumna from Católica wins Deutsche Boerse Photography Foundation's “Thinking Photography” Award at the world's most prestigious photography exhibition
Dzifa Peters, a German-Ghanaian visual artist and PhD alumna at The Lisbon Consortium of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, is the winner of the Thinking Photography Award presented by the Deutsche Boerse Photography Foundation at Paris Photo, the world's most prestigious photography exhibition.
“It is a true honour to receive the “Thinking Photography” prize in recognition of my doctoral thesis, Tropes of Polarity: Visual Representation and Afrodiasporic Identities.” The artists reacts, expressing gratitude: “I am deeply grateful to the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation and the German Photographic Society (DGPh) for this recognition. My heartfelt thanks go to my supervisor, Professor Isabel Capeloa Gil, and my co-supervisor, Apl. Professor Dr. Michael Basseler, whose thoughtful guidance and unwavering intellectual support have shaped this research in profound ways.”
“Above all, I owe a great debt to the artists and scholars whose ideas and creative work have inspired and informed this project from the very beginning,” Dzifa Peters adds.
The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation and the German Photographic Society (DGPh) will jointly present the “Thinking Photography” prize and the “Writing Photography” prize during an award ceremony on 14 November 2025 at the Goethe-Institut in Paris.
On this occasion, Dzifa Peters will discuss her research in conversation with Lucia Halder, Curator and Head of the Photography Collection at the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum in Cologne.
The researcher completed her PhD on Afro-diasporic identities and visual representation at the Lisbon Consortium Cultural Studies Programme at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, in a joint course with Justus-Liebig Universität and the International Centre for Cultural Studies in Giessen.
Dzifa Peters is also a junior researcher at Católica's Centre for Research in Communication and Culture, and currently works with photography, memory and Afro-diasporic identities in the post-migration context in Portugal, as a research fellow in the Integrated Human Development Scholarship Programme, at Católica.
Portraits of contemporary witnesses of the independence movement in Ghana are packed for archiving. Dzifa Peters in collaboration with Josef Zky, from the project "Being a guest" (2015-present), C-print, courtesy of the artists.