Meet the winners of the Keep an Eye Photography Stipend 2025

FekieFikie by Adriënne Verburg

Jury report:

"What do we say when words fall short – when language falters, wavers, or disappears altogether? Can emotion be conveyed through the weight of a material, the silence of an image, the texture of a memory? This project starts at the edge of speech, drawing from the artist’s personal experience of developing her own language as a child. Using photography – perhaps the most universal language – she constructs a visual lexicon that relies not on syntax or grammar, but on intuition, tension, and visual resonance."

"The viewer is invited into an open-ended exchange, where images act as emotional triggers that embrace both complexity and ambiguity: not everything is legible, and that is precisely the point. What makes this project so remarkable is its refusal to offer clarity. It proposes a different kind of understanding – slower, stranger, more felt than spoken. By emphasising the slipperiness of language and the richness of what lies beneath it, this work creates a space in which meaning is not delivered, but discovered."

Fowru by Ken Stove

Jury report: "Through a layered narrative that unfolds slowly, we are taken on a journey through heritage, memory, and recognition. How do you relate to a history that has shaped you, yet one you never personally lived? The work communicates thoroughly and with subtle symbolism, in a direct yet never illustrative manner. We move non-linearly through timelines where boundaries blur and imagination sets off. The work is intimate, yet outward-looking – an invitation to remember together, and to reposition oneself within a larger story.

This project reveals clear potential for the continuation of an artistic exploration that feels both urgent and relevant. A search in which looking back becomes a method for looking forward, and in which a third generation of migration gains a voice – not just to bear witness, but to take ownership of how their history is told."

Calling the Birds Home by Iyanla Etnel

Jury report: "Calling the Birds Home is an enchanting meditation on memory, bodily sovereignty, and the invisible scars of colonial history on the bodies of women of colour. The work is presented as an intimate trilogy – three screens, three timelines, three pulses – connecting past and present not as a narrative, but as an embodied emotion. It does not ask to be understood in conventional terms; it asks to be felt, without specifying how."

"Through its slow pace and the near-silence of its subjects, the work creates space for what often remains unseen: the quiet pain of intergenerational trauma and the slow, radical act of return. The film’s immersive soundscape – layered with women’s voices, song, and breath – functions as a calling, an invocation. These sonic threads reach through time, echoing the title itself: a gesture of summoning, of bringing back into presence something that was long gone."

The Prize

The prize was made possible for the sixth consecutive year by the Keep an Eye Foundation, that supports starting and talented artists by offering them a springboard or stage to reach the wider audience. The Keep an Eye Photography Stipend grants a sum of 10,000 euros, of which a part is reserved for coaching. The main criterion for participation is that photography must be a significant part of the graduation work.

Keep an Eye Foundation

The Keep an Eye Foundation supports starting artists, musicians, designers and other creatives. Together with renowned educational institutes and festivals, Keep an Eye puts these creators in the limelight. Thanks to the years-long partnership with HKU, this foundation can support new talent and thus enhance the quality of the whole sector.

Go to the Keep an Eye Foundation