A personal story of loss in post-apartheid South Africa wins the 2025 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize

“What a journey!” exclaimed Lindokuhle Sobekwa, the 30-year-old Johannesburg-based artist who last night picked up contemporary photography’s biggest prize.

He was in London to receive his £30,000 award as the 2025 recipient of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize. It is given in recognition of his photobook, I carry Her photo with Me, a work that uses a scrapbook aesthetic together with his photographs and handwritten notes to speak about the loss of his sister. The work also aims to create a wider dialogue about the phenomena of disappearances in his home country, and to explore the continued legacy of apartheid and colonialism.

The South African photographer, one of the “born free” generation, was raised in the township of Katlehong in the years that followed his country’s first democratic elections. He only took up photography in 2012, when he took part in the Of Soul and Joy Project, a nearby programme for high-school learners. One of his mentors was Bieke Depoorter, the Belgian photographer who was shortlisted for the same prize in 2023.

Aged 19, Sobekwa’s work documenting a new drug cocktail that was ravaging Black townships across the country, was published in a South African newspaper and abroad, and was exhibited in Johannesburg at the Turbine Art Fair, dedicated to emerging and mid-career artists. The following year, in 2015, he was given a scholarship to study at the influential Market Photo Workshop, the same place that last year’s winner—fellow South African, Lebohang Kganye—had studied, which was set up by David Goldblatt, who was shortlisted for the prize in 2004.

And Sobekwa has still more connections to the Deutsche Börse prize’s past winners and shortlisted photographers. In 2017, he was selected by the Magnum Foundation’s Photography and Social Justice Program to develop I carry Her photo with Me. The foundation’s president is Susan Meiselas, the winner of the 2019 prize.

Sobekwa joined Magnum Photos as a nominee in 2018 and became a full member in 2022. He later collaborated with another of the prestigious photo agency’s photographers, Mikhael Subotzky, who together with Patrick Waterhouse, was the winner of the 2015 prize.

Sobekwa is the fourth photographer born in Africa to win the prize in the past five years. There have been four South African winners in the past 12 years, and a further five have been shortlisted—testament to the impact the nation’s photographers have made since its transition to democracy. Sobekwa is also the fourth member of Magnum to win the prize in the past 14 years.

The other shortlisted artists for this year’s prize are Rahim Fortune, Tarrah Krajnak and Cristina De Middel—the current Magnum president, who was previously shortlisted in 2013—who each receive £5000.

• I carry Her photo with Me, published by Mack, 2024
• Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2025, an exhibition showcasing work by all four shortlisted artists, The Photographers’ Gallery, London, until 15 June