BildBotschaft Hamburg
Encounters and participation through photography
Photos have superpowers. They reach us immediately and get us talking to each other. We want to use these powers to bring different people in our society together. To this end, we will gradually open BildBotschaften in various cities from fall 2025. We are starting with our pilot project for local photojournalism in Hamburg.
If you would like to support the BildBotschaften project and our work, we would be delighted to receive your donation.
BildBotschaft Hamburg creates space for dialog – through exhibitions, participatory journalism and educational work.
The project consists of three elements:
Democracy needs solidarity, dialog, curiosity, respect and the willingness to tolerate different perspectives.
Photography enables this dialog. It appeals, invites, opens up perspectives, encourages reactions, creates encounters and exchange.
As a physical location for this, we are opening an inviting space that attracts very different social groups – the BildBotschaft Hamburg.
The JugendBildredaktion is one of the central components of BildBotschaft. It will be tested as a co-creation lab in a six-month prototype phase in Hamburg from November 2025.
Young people aged 14-21 work under the guidance of photojournalists and in cooperation with other organizations and media genres on the development and photographic implementation of local and socially relevant topics.
The results are presented to a wide audience as a public photo panorama in exhibitions, workshops and dialog events in order to bring people into exchange and discourse and to make new, young perspectives visible.
Together with the young people from the JugendBild editorial team, we develop workshops with methods and content for their generation that specifically address topics selected by them, such as social cohesion, participation, climate change, diversity or sustainability, and carry them out at schools.
The project thus makes a further inclusive, educational and activating contribution to increasing media literacy.
As a train-the-trainer concept, it enables participation in the prototypical design and implementation of future media skills training courses for schools and other youth education organizations.
What problems are we tackling
We all move around in our information and filter bubbles. Social media in particular continuously reinforce this effect.
And so we unlearn the ability to engage in personal, respectful dialog about general, but especially important and critical issues with people who disagree, who have different ideas and needs.
We are losing cohesion and a shared perception of reality and desirable visions of the future.
With the BildBotschaft Hamburg, we are creating a place that invites people to engage in constructive dialog across society using a variety of photos
In times when Instagram, TikTok and YouTube characterize our visual communication and information intake, professional, visual reporting on local topics hardly takes place anymore.
With the decline in local media, the images, topics and perspectives that would enable our shared perception of what is happening in our living environment are also disappearing.
The photos from the JugendBildRedaktion and other visual editorial projects form the basis for this constructive dialog in the BildBotschaft.
In a nutshell
Your support counts!
We need your support to implement this important project.
Contact us for further information and individual sponsorship or cooperation opportunities at
Or donate directly here:
What others say
In times where the discourse is quite divergent and there is only black and white, it's super important that more people engage with more topics. It's great that we're taking our work out of the photojournalistic context and putting it back on the streets.
Generally totally enthusiastic... There are so many people (outside our bubble) who are involved in photography here.
Totally positive, I'm surprised that so many people came and are still coming. I like the pop-up style, I find it likeable and uncomplicated.
Many thanks to our partners
