Graduate Daniel Chatard wins at World Press Photo 2024.
The photojournalist documented German coal mining for several years.
Immerath, North Rhine-Westphalia © Daniel Chatard
To expand the Garzweiler open pit mine, the parish church of St. Lambertus, popularly known as “Immerather Dom”, will be demolished in January 2018.
Graduate Daniel Chatard was honored at this year’s World Press Photo Award: With his long-term project “No Man’s Land”, he won in the “Long-Term Projects” category for the Europe region. In this photographic essay, he has been documenting lignite mining in North Rhine-Westphalia since 2017. Daniel Chatard originally started the project as a student photo project at Hannover University of Applied Sciences and Arts: At the time, a friend had told Daniel that villages were to be destroyed for coal mining. Since then, he has continued to work on it, and a book is now in the works. In an interview with Stern magazine, Daniel Chatard recalled that one of the things that impressed him most was the determination and resilience of the activists in the forest. “One of the squatters, nicknamed Clumsy, lived in Hambach Forest for almost five years straight,” he recalls.
According to the World Press Photo website, the jury appreciated the calm visual design of this project. Daniel Chatard’s work illustrates the local perspective on struggles over the extraction of raw materials that can be observed worldwide. It concludes: “Among many entries on this subject, this project stood out for its deep and committed reporting.”
To finance the book version of the project, Daniel Chatard has also launched a crowdfunding campaign. The book can be pre-ordered there until April 28, 2024 for a price starting at 38 euros. The book project is sponsored by VG Bild-Kunst, Kunststiftung NRW and Landschaftsverband Rheinland and published by “The Eriskay Connection” .
Photographer Daniel Chatard. Photo: Aliona Kardash
Garzweiler open pit mine, Kerpen © Daniel Chatard
Several hundred activists entered the Hambach open pit mine during an action by the “Ende Gelände” action alliance in November 2017.
Manheim-neu, Kerpen © Daniel Chatard
The Manheim-neu resettlement site is located a few kilometres away from Mannheim. The groundbreaking ceremony took place in 2011; today, about 1,000 people live there.
Daniel Chatard was born in 1996. From 2015 to 2021, he completed a Bachelor’s degree at Hanover University of Applied Sciences and Arts. During this time, he spent a semester abroad in Siberia and worked as an intern at a Bremen daily newspaper. He then moved on towards a Master’s degree at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. Daniel’s work has already won awards at the German Youth Photo Prize and the German Photo Book Prize. His pictures were exhibited at the FOTODOKS Festival in Munich and the Noorderlicht Festival in the Netherlands, among others. Daniel Chatard was also a finalist for the Leica Oskar Barnack Award and was nominated for the Prix Pictet. He works for the ZEIT, Den Spiegel, and the Washington Post, among others.
With Daniel Chatard, this is the third year in a row where a student from Hannover has been honored with the World Press Photo Award. Last year, Jonas Kako was named “Regional Winner” in the “Singles” category for North and Central America. Nanna Heitmann won in the European “Story“category in 2022 . In previous years, Jesco Denzel and Heba Khamis were among the winners. The latter even received two awards.
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Your contact partners will be happy to assist you with your personal concerns. However, due to the large number of enquiries, we ask you to first check our FAQ to see if your question may already have been answered.
Dean of Studies, Design and Media department
Programme representative
Application and admission procedure
Hochschule Hannover
Faculty III – Media, Information and Design
Expo Plaza 2
D-30539 Hanover