Romain Mader (1988, Switzerland) is the winner of the eleventh Foam Paul Huf Award 2017. This annual prize, given to a photography talent under 35 years old, consists of €20.000 and an exhibition at Foam Museum. The jury chose Romain Mader from a pool of 100 nominated photographers, from 25 countries worldwide. Mader wins the prize for his series Ekaterina, a narrative in which he seeks a bride in the imaginary city of Ekaterina.
More generally, Romain Mader’s work explores themes of gender-representation, loneliness and romance by creating fictional narratives within his images. In Ekaterina Romain travels to the imaginary city of Ekaterina and documents his search for a girlfriend, clumsily posing with mail-order brides and passing through a series of fictional towns meeting numerous “Ekaterinas” until he finally finds his bride. Explaining his reasoning for making himself the protagonist Romain Mader’s says: “It’s too easy to mock people. It’s better to pose myself and be the main character in my work. This way, there’s irony and vulnerability.”
https://www.foam.org/talent/foam-paul-huf-award
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