Frederike Helwig is a German-born photographer based in London and working internationally. Alongside her long-term editorial practice, she produces personal projects focusing on social documentary, portraiture, still life and landscape, often exploring alternative perspectives of specific subjects or commissioned briefs.
Helwig has published four monographs: Propaganda (self-published, 2016), a series of photographs depicting motivational slogans covering the walls of a high school in Georgia, USA; Rundgang (Here Press, 2017) that features portraits and documentary work covering an American real estate development in Nicaragua; Kriegskinder (Hatje Cantz, 2017), a long-term independent project which explores identity and personal history of people who grew up in post-war Germany; and Lessons To Learn (self-published, 2022), a newspaper zine addressing the newly introduced Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. Kriegskinder was nominated for the Prix Pictet Award in 2019 and exhibited in Munich and Berlin.
Helwig’s work has been included in group exhibitions at the Haus der Photographie in Hamburg, Athens Photography Festival APhF 18, and GFMF in Berlin. Helwig has received the Lead Awards for editorial photography in 2000 and 2014, was nominated for an ICP Infinity award in 2010 and received the Anamorphosis Prize for Propaganda in 2017. Her editorial work has appeared in publications including iD, TheFace, Dazed, Zeit, The Guardian, NYTimes and Le Monde.
