About PWA

Since 2014, Galleri Image and the Aarhus School of Architecture have collaborated on organising Photobook Week Aarhus(PWA), a yearly festival focused on the rapidly growing international interest in photobooks in recent years.

PWA reflects a continuous study of the evolution and role of the medium and presents the photobook to the general public and to individuals who work professionally with photobooks and photography, be it from an artistic, communication-related or academic standpoint.

User involvement, openness and dialogue are key words when it comes to the festival. For this reason, PWA has placed great emphasis on inviting a large number of exhibitors and speakers who can present the photobook in a cross-disciplinary perspective. This has made it possible to exhibit significant but rare photobooks that have been discussed by researchers, photographers, leading curators, architects and many other qualified contributors from around the world.

Meet our founding members:

Chief Curator. Editor, writer

Moritz Neumüller

Moritz Neumüller is a curator, educator and writer in the feld of photography and new media. He has worked for institutions such as MoMA New York and PhotoIreland Festival in Dublin and co-founded Photobook Week Aarhus (Denmark) in 2014. Since 2010, he has run The Curator Ship, an online resource for visual artists. Apart from his curatorial practice, Neu-müller has been working for more than ten years at the forefront of making culture accessible for everybody, including disabled people. In 2009, he founded the project ArteConTacto and in 2011 the initiative MuseumForAll, with the mission to make museums open to all audiences.

Curatorial team. Director Galleri Image

Beate Cegielska

Since 1990 Beate Cegielska has curated numerous group and solo exhibitions by Danish and international artists and organised exhibitions in Europe, South Korea, China and India. For many years she has also participated as a portfolio reviewer at different international festivals of photography around the world. Galleri Image is a non-commercial exhibition space aiming at spreading knowledge of high quality photo-based art by showing Danish as well as international art photography and video art. Founded in Aarhus (Denmark) in 1977, the gallery is the oldest non-profit exhibition space for photographic art in Scandinavia. In fact, for many years it was the only photo art gallery in Denmark. Over the last 39 years Galleri Image har achieved international reputation thanks to its exhibitions and has contributed considerably to the recognition and understanding of photography as an important and independent genre in the world of visual art.

Curatorial team. Architect and PhD

Anne Elisabeth Toft

Anne Elisabeth Toft specializes in architectural history and theory with a focus on architectural photography. She is an associate professor at the Aarhus School of Architecture. She has participated in group and solo exhibitions on architecture and architectural photography in Denmark and abroad. Anne Elisabeth has curated exhibitions on architecture and photography, and she has written about architecture, architectural education, architectural photography, and the visual arts. Co-curator of Photobook Week Aarhus since 2014, she is resposnible for the festival’s architecture related programme. She is a member of the European Society for the History of Photography, a member of the international research committee for the iphiGenia Gender Design Award, and served on the jury of the Danish Society of Artists (2014–20). Since 2015 she has been the president of the Nordic Association of Architectural Research (NAF/NAAR) and founding co-editor at the Nordic Academic Press of Architectural Research

Curatorial team. Artist.

Jesper Rasmussen

Since the mid-1980s (after briefly attending The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts) he has worked in sculpture, installation, graphics, photography, film, writing and publishing. 1986-91 Rasmussen was a member of the Solkorset group of artists, of which he was also a co-founder. Besides Jesper Rasmussen, the group included Robin Lybecher, Kim Grønborg, Marianne Jørgensen and Hans E. Madsen. They experimented with collective work processes and carried out a number of large, spectacular spatial installations. Jesper Rasmussen has exhibited his own work in numerous solo and group exhibitions and is represented in several Danish museums, including ARoS, Arken and Statens Museum for Kunst. Since 1981, alongside his work as an artist, Jesper Rasmussen has published the journal Pist Protta in collaboration with Åse Eg Jørgensen and Jesper Fabricius. The journal experiments with the form, content, layout and expression of each new issue. The individual issues are designed by fellow artists and focus on various artistic themes and concerns in funny, off-beat ways. Rector at Jutland Art Academy, Aarhus, Denmark 2007-15

General coordinator
Martin Dannesboe Singh

Book Market Coordinator
Vreni Hockenjos

Production team
Asta Nyyssonen
Anna Brix Nielsen
Nanna Lykke Larsen
Sara Arroyo Knudsen

Advisory Board
Irene Attinger
Kyungwoo Chun
John Fleetwood
Russet Lederman
Carole Naggar
Thyago Nogueira
Mette Sandbye
Louise Wolthers

Organised by Galleri Image & Aarhus School of Architecture

Photobook Week Aarhus 2023 is made possible by the City of Aarhus (Kulturudviklingspuljen), Dreyers Fond, The Politiken-Fonden, Instituto Camões, Portugal’s Embassy in Denmark, Nordea-fonden and Institut Français Danemark.

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‘It’s admirable due to all challenges that Photobook Week Aarhus 2020 took place. Let’s hope we can all turn the devastating virus into a positive virus called creativity.’
Erik Kessels, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

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‘Dear PWA-team, the Photobookweek in Aarhus is a great and ambitious initiative, that allows visitors to get in contact with photobooks from all over the world. The much needed debate and discussions on photobooks are stimulated and shared with a broad audience. It was a great collaboration and I’m looking forward to discover the next edition in 2021!’
Tamara Berghmans, Antwerpen, Belgium

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‘Dear PWA-Team, I hope you are getting a bit of rest and basking in the glory of the success. Congratulations, it is truly beautiful what you have created.”
Sarah Giersing, Copenhagen, Denmark

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‘Dear PWA team, on behalf of Reflektor I would like to thank you for your efforts organising a real life event! For obvious reasons none of us could join you, but I’ve watched photos and videos from the Open Book Market with great pleasure. Congratulations to such a huge success! And looking very much forward to the next edition!’
Thomas Licek, Vienna, Austria

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‘The Photobook Week in Aarhus inspires with perfect organisation and a personal atmosphere that invites visitors to concentrate on the essentials, the photo books. The second advantage is the thematisation of historical photobook topics, together with a program that deals with the photobook culture of individual countries and traces trends in current photobook creation. This allows for a wide range of content, but without falling into arbitrariness. Creating a pleasant working atmosphere and offering an interesting range of topics, Photobookweek in Aarhus is probably unique in the festival landscape.’
Thomas Wiegand, Kassel, Germany

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‘Photobook Week Aarhus is one of the smaller festivals out there. What seems to be a weakness at first sight, turns out to be the festival’s biggest strength. It allows the attendees to engage with the content in profound ways that you will thoroughly miss once you go someplace else. Furthermore its informal and almost familial atmosphere opens opportunities to connect and to form friendships that might last for a very long time. Me, I cannot wait to go there again.’
Georg Zinsler, Vienna, Austria

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‘The Photobook Week Aarhus is a great festival in a small world, and being in the libraries of Aarhus was a return to the libraries of my childhood – a feast of books. It is wonderful that there is a team of makers and believers that can put together such a wonderful venue!’
Rolf Sachsse, Bonn, Germany

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‘Dear PWA team, I think it’s great how you mastered the last photobook week under such difficult circumstances. I particularly enjoyed the live streams and loved your whole Instagram appearance. Thank you for everything and I was really happy to be represented with my book.’
Marco Leitermann, Berlin, Germany

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‘Dear PWA, I communicate to you to express my gratitude as a presenter and curator in Photo Book Week Aarhus 2019. It was an amazing professional adventure, full of learning and dialogues with the public and the city. I am very proud to have presented my country; Chile, through photography. Long life and best to PWA.’
Tatiana Sardá, Santiago, Chile

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‘Being an activist myself of photography and its visual language, I think it’s very important to develop ways of judging a cultural meeting by the quality of the interactions rather than the amount of them. It is a bliss that you have the time and attention of a very dedicated group of people to develop a presentation, and then have an extended feedback momentum. You manage to promote, as a team, an intense and deep exchange from people that otherwise wouldn’t meet, relate and even develop projects. I can assure you I am a witness of those dynamics developing and, of course, I became a fan of your city, activity and guests. Long life to PWA, thanks for all!’
Luis Weinstein, Valparaiso, Chile

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‘Many thanks for your great work of uniting artists and sharing interesting works from different countries. Despite the covid-restriction you managed to get great coverage both offline and online. I was really happy to be a part of this wonderful event! Good luck with the significant work you are doing!’
Anna Karaulova, Moscow, Russia

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‘Dear PWA-Team, thanks for giving me a chance to share my photobook at the Open Book Market, for being super organized and for sharing photographs and videos of the event with us. Unfortunately, I couldn’t travel to the PWA this year but at least books can travel during these challenging times.’
Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert, Limassol, Cyprus