The Sony World Photography Awards has named the winner of its European Student Award, spotlighting an rising German photographer, capturing the complexity of femininity and individuality inside Germany’s male-dominated armed forces.
Newly launched in 2026, the European Student Award celebrates excellent pictures works – championing essentially the most compelling rising voices from throughout Europe.
This 12 months’s winner, Teresa Halbreiter of the University of Applied Sciences Hamburg, impressed judges along with her thought-provoking collection Stillgestanden (‘Attention!’). Placing ladies on the centre of an establishment traditionally formed by masculine archetypes, Halbreiter’s work interrogates id, belonging, and private expression inside inflexible buildings.
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European Student Award winner
In a statement, the judges praised the project for its connection and depth: “The series intelligently explores how femininity can persist and adapt within wider structures, what we give to be part of something larger than ourselves, and what remains when we step away from it.”
For Halbreiter, the German Bundeswehr became both subject and setting – “a world unto itself,” where individuality and femininity can often get lost behind uniformity.
To create Stillgestanden (‘Attention!’), she connected with women navigating this environment, capturing intimate frames that reveal the tension between conformity and expression, strength and vulnerability.
At the heart of the project lies a series of questions: “What is life as a female soldier really like? (…) How does it feel, as a woman, to be part of an institution that is still strongly shaped by images of masculinity? And who remains once the uniform has been taken off?”
Halbreiter explains, “Between the need to be part of a whole and the desire to be seen as an individual. The work thus raises the question of the extent to which military structures shape or limit identity (…).”
All quotes from Halbreiter are sourced from the photographer’s website and translated from German into English.
For extra data and to find all shortlisted photographers of the Sony World Photography Awards, go to the World Photo website.
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