Anna Jermolaewa is the winner of the 2021 Otto Breicha Prize for Artistic Photography. A self-described “realist”, she has devised a distinctive form of critical engagement with reality that is enlivened by a dark sense of humor. Jermolaewa’s works often develop out of observations of everyday objects. In 1998, she started taking photographs at markets all over the world. Markets—the sociologist Max Weber called them “universal models of social behavior”—are microcosms that, Jermolaewa believes, reflect society as a whole.
The artist’s book produced for the exhibition brings together previously unpublished photographs by Jermolaewa on the main themes of “Markets” and “Found Objects” and contains a section of text from the video “back to the silk routes”, in which she explores the fates of Bukharian Jews who emigrated from Uzbekistan and sell their goods at the Vienna Naschmarkt. Themes such as memory, social dislocation, and fresh starts are visualized in rich detail yet without sentimentalism.

Anna Jermolaewa, *1970 in St. Petersburg, Russia; lives and works in Vienna.