Awoiska van der Molen

Awoiska van der Molen (born 1972) is a Dutch photographer, living in Amsterdam. She has produced three books of black and white landscape photographs, made in remote places. Van der Molen has been shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize and the Prix Pictet, and her work is held in the collections of the Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Education Van der Molen studied architecture and design at Academie Minerva in Groningen, Netherlands, then photography both there and at Hunter College, City University of New York, New York City. In 2003 she gained an MFA in photography at Academy of Art and Design St. Joost in Breda, Netherlands. After that she turned to photographing anonymous buildings at the edge of the city. She makes black and white prints in her own darkroom. including the volcanic Canary Islands, Blanco (2017) contains photographs of desolate landscapes and trees. The Living Mountain (2020) is "a book about land, solitude and the planet we inhabit." Sean O'Hagan and Jörg Colberg have praised the quality of her prints. Status, Casemore Kirkeby, San Francisco, 2018. Am schwarzen Himmelsrund, Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam, 2019. Solo exhibition, Museum Kranenburgh, Bergen, 2019. The Humanness of Our Lonely Selves, Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography, Amsterdam, June 22 – October 13, 2024.

Group exhibitions Into the Woods: Trees in Photography, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2018 Collected, Pier 24 Photography, San Francisco, 2016–2019 Looking Back, Pier 24 Photography, San Francisco, 2021–2023

Collections Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, Amsterdam Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography, Amsterdam: 4 prints (as of November 2020) FoMu, Antwerp Fotomuseum Den Haag, The Hague ING Collection Museum of Photography, Seoul, Seoul Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam Pier 24 Photography, San Francisco Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Amsterdam Victoria and Albert Museum, London: a set of 8 collotype prints (as of November 2020)

Awards 2014: Grand Prize, Hariban Award, Benrido Collotype Atelier, Kyoto, Japan 2017: Larry Sultan Photography Award, Pier 24 Photography and McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco, Califnrnia 2017: Shortlisted, Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, London, for her exhibition Blanco at Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam 2019: Shortlisted, Prix Pictet, Geneva