Lindokuhle Sobekwa wins the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2025

The influential prize rewards artists and their projects recognised as having made the most significant contribution to international contemporary photography over the past 12 months.

Lindokuhle Sobekwa (b. 1995, South Africa) was shortlisted for the book “I carry Her photo with Me”, published by MACK in 2024. 

The deeply personal project began when Sobekwa found a family portrait with his older sister Ziyanda’s face cut out. It remains the only photograph he has of her. One day when the siblings were seven and thirteen, she chased him and he was hit by a car and badly injured. She disappeared hours later, only returning a decade later, ill. By this time Sobekwa had become a photographer. He tried to take her portrait, but stopped when she reacted angrily. Ziyanda died soon after.

“I carry Her photo with Me” combines photographs, handwritten notes and family snapshots. Through this scrapbook-like publication, Sobekwa explores the memory of his sister and the wider implications of such disappearances – a troubling part of South Africa’s history. The work is part of his wider practice on fragmentation, poverty and the long-reaching ramifications of apartheid and colonialism across all levels of South African society.

Main Image: Lindokuhle Sobekwa, Family group photo on a Christmas day, South Africa, Johannesburg, Thokoza 2017 © Lindokuhle Sobekwa