Your picture for democracy! Freelens as a guest

Your picture for democracy! Freelens as a guest at the Photo Pavillon. Temporary House of Photography as part of the Photoszene Festival 2025 in Cologne
An event organized by DGPh/Sektion Bild with talk guests Bastian Fischer, David Baltzer and Teona Gogichaishvili. Moderated by Miriam Zlobinski

Your picture for democracy! #ReframeGermany - Let's take back the sovereignty of interpretation over our open society. Under this motto, the AK Demokratie of Freelens e.V., the professional association of photographers, called on professional photographers in Germany to send in their picture of our democracy at the end of 2024. In the face of growing right-wing extremist and populist movements, the association and the participating photographers wanted to take a stand and stand up for an open, democratic and inclusive society.

From over 600 submitted images, three motifs were selected to be shown nationwide on digital media as part of an outdoor advertising campaign in partnership with Ströer ahead of the 2025 federal elections. At the same time, they were an appeal to go to the polls and vote for a party from the democratic spectrum.

In a cooperation between the Internationale Photoszene Köln, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie/DGPh, Sektion Bild and Freelens, we invite you to an evening for democracy and photography.

We will present a large selection of the submitted photographs as part of a screening and discuss them with Bastian Fischer and David Baltzer, two of the Freelens photographers who initiated the campaign with their colleagues as part of the AK Demokratie. How did the campaign come about? What was the trigger? How did it go and what will happen now that the general election is over? And: can photography really save democracy?

Miriam Zlobinski (curator/Berlin) will lead the discussion. Teona Gogichaishvili, photographer and lecturer at various universities and institutions, co-organizer of the international photo festival Kolga Tbilisi Photo in Tbilisi, Georgia and member of the DGPh board since October 2024, will also be there. She was also part of the jury for the selection of images for the first campaign of the #ReframeGermany campaign.