ROBIN HINSCH

WAHALA

The work “WAHALA” arouses around the topics of untamed economic growth and ecological perspectives. What drives the world and for how long. For the last decades mankind was heavily investing in fossil fuels. The world now is unfortunately still very dependent on this kind of power supply. But as we can see due to actual developments we are probably and hopefully at the end of an era. The project has led me to India, Nigeria, Poland and Germany. I have worked in the Oil fields of the Niger Delta, the coal belt of Jharkhand and around the large open cast mines around North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany and Silesia in Poland. I was focusing mainly on the people and their surroundings which are heavily affected by the oil, gas and coal industry. An important point was for me not only to concentrate on the fact that big national and international companies are exploiting the nature and leaving the local people with the ecological difficulties behind, I was also looking on the fact that most of the people living in these areas trying to hack in to the supply chain and try to make a living out of the fossil fuels which they are getting out of the wells and mines by themselves.

Robin Hinsch is an artist and photographer based between Berlin and Hamburg, Germany. In his artistic, photographic practice he focuses mainly on social-economic and political issues. In his research-based subjective sometimes intuitive storytelling approach he combines photography with film collages and installation techniques. His work has seen him travel to various countries like Iraq, Ukraine, Syria, Nigeria, China, Russia, India, Uganda and a lot of other countries. He studied photography in Karlsruhe, Hannover and Hamburg. His Work has been awarded with the World Photography Award, the International Photography Award, the European Photo Exhibition Award and the Georg Koppmann Prize, has been shortlisted for the Leica Oskar Barnack Prize and the Lucie Awards and has been nominated for the Prix Pictet and the Henri Nennen Prize, to name a few. His work is widely nationally and internationally published. Since 2016 he is an elected member of the German Photographic Academy. Besides his own practice he is teaching and holding lectures at various occasions like Leuphana University Lüneburg, AdBK Nuremberg and the House of Photography in Hamburg. Since 2017 he is the curator and founder of „Format“ a vital laboratory for contemporary photography in Hamburg.