Polina Schneider

Polina Schneider was born in St Petersburg (Leningrad) in 1989, during perestroika, and grew up with different languages, cultures and religious beliefs (Catholicism, Judaism and Russian Orthodoxy). This socio-cultural heritage has sharpened her sense for interpersonal and intercultural communication.

After arriving in Germany, she had to fight from an early age for her rights as a person read as female and as a migrant. Eager to learn more and faster, Polina studied Chinese as a foreign language and computer science – showing that (technical) languages, computer science and women need not be a contradiction. After two bachelor’s degrees in 2018, she returned to university in 2021: alongside her job as a quality and project manager in IT, she is now studying photojournalism and documentary photography in Hannover.

As a member of the collectives Aura Visuals Collective, Female Photoclubs and Türspion Magazin, she is keen to draw attention to social grievances, to help shape public debate and to make sure women’s perspectives are heard in public.

Since starting her studies, Polina has exhibited or been published with Native Agency, Geste Paris, Women Art Prize/X-Treme, L.A. Photocurator, Dek Unu Magazine, Phodar Biennale and Wortimbild, among others.

Contact
polina.schneider@hs-hannover.de

Polina’s articles:

On the margins

‘I can shop whenever I want’.

Open around the clock, almost without staff: how a self-service shop makes village life more relaxed.

Recommended by the editors

Advice

Studio lighting: techniques, lighting set-ups and tips for photographers.

The right light makes or breaks a studio shot. We explain the most important techniques and lighting set-ups – and how to achieve perfect studio lighting step by step.

Advice

Analogue large-format photography: why I love the heaviest camera in the world.

Why would I voluntarily lug a camera as heavy as a sack of cement around the world? In this first-hand account, you’ll find out what still makes analogue large-format photography so special today.

A young woman rests her head on a young man’s shoulder, both in motorcycle jackets on a moped in Greifswald – large format photo ‘Mathilda and Theo’ by Ludwig Nikulski

Comment and debate

Between reasons of state and journalistic integrity

The German-Palestinian journalist Farid Dabour on media, power and responsibility

Portrait of German-Palestinian journalist Farid Dabour in a leather jacket in front of a red wooden door – interview on media, reasons of state and journalism

Award winners

On the edge of the hail of bullets.

Rafael Heygster questions society’s approach to war in “I Died 22 Times.”

Men in camouflage take airsoft guns out of a car boot at the edge of a forest in Brozek, Poland – Rafael Heygster’s photo series ‘I Died 22 Times’

Ideals

Stuffed, squeezed, starved – body ideals through the ages

For as long as we have existed, there have been supposedly ideal bodies. Which proportions were flattering in the Middle Ages? And what might a modern perspective look like?

On the margins

‘It was raining ice, and our feet were frozen’

A personal visit to the memorial: a survivor’s voice guides us through the history of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp – between grief and new beginnings.

The entrance to the documentation centre at the Bergen-Belsen memorial.

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