Mats Hoff

Mats Hoff (*1995 in Kiel) lives and works in Hamburg. Shaped by skateboarding, he first used photography mainly as a way of documenting. After training as a digital and print media designer, he spent several years working in product design, typography and art direction before his focus increasingly shifted to photography. His interest in design and narrative structures still shapes the way he works today.

Since 2024, he has been studying ‘Visual Journalism and Documentary Photography’ at Hochschule Hannover and works across disciplines as a documentary and portrait photographer. His work has appeared in DIE ZEIT, fluter and Emerge Magazine, among others, and has been exhibited at the Horizonte Zingst photo festival and during the Fotosommer of the Triennale der Photographie Hamburg. In 2026, he was nominated for the Leica Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award, selected for Plat(t)form at Fotomuseum Winterthur and won the Blank Art Foundation Photo Award.

Contact:
matshoff.com

Stories by Mats

Award winners

Grey Grounds.

More than 6,000 soldiers, two training areas, a town marching in lockstep. In Munster, the ‘Zeitenwende’ has long been part of everyday life. A photo essay about a place where people applaud the Bundeswehr.

Soldier with a rifle in a guardhouse at the entrance to a firing range

Recommended by the editors

Masculinity

Misogyny in the feed: when algorithms shape reality

Misogynistic content spreads rapidly on social media. For many young women, it is no longer a digital phenomenon but part of everyday life. An investigation into quiet radicalisation, a lack of prevention and the consequences in real life.

Comment and debate

What some people see in a picture – and others miss

Transcultural perspectives show how differently people read images – and which hidden clues only some can see.

Masculinity

The social pull of masculinity

What does it mean to be a man today? On the pressure to conform, on uncertainty – and why simple answers are so seductive.

On the margins

‘Why would he need a raincoat? He’s got a car’

How tunnels and roads shape life on the Faroe Islands – sometimes with surprisingly dry logic.

Collecting

Everyday self-care: breathing, in spite of everything

The world is getting louder, young people more exhausted – and self-care is becoming a privilege. Where young people still find strength in their daily lives.

Ideals

Small but defiant

While they were stranded during the pandemic, Circus Siola’s caravans were shot at and its performers insulted as ‘scum’. Is there no place in our society for Siola’s ‘classical old-European circus art’?

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