Sebastian Wells

soлomiya magazine2022

soлomiya is an independent magazine founded in April 2022 by Kyiv-based photographer Vsevolod Kazarin and Sebastian Wells in response to the Russian war against Ukraine. It aims to explore and showcase the young cultural and artistic scene in Ukraine, promoting it in both Ukrainian and European cities.
Order the Magazine here

Across the Great Wall2022

This title stems from the first e-mail ever sent from China. It said: “Across the Great Wall, we can reach every corner in the world" and was sent to the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology on 20 September 1987. For this project, Sebastian produced a diary in real time together with writer Lars Spannagel during the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing, China. Read and support the Blog here:
Open Blog

Olympia2016 - 2024

Since 2016, Sebastian Wells covers Olympic Games in such a subjective way that it stands out from the mass medias’ thoroughly industrialized depiction of them. His photographs look beyond the spotlight, questioning the Games’ spectacular monumentality. When something goes wrong in the stagings of the sports officials, when the curtain has fallen, that’s when it becomes appealing for him. He is less interested in the beaming winners and furious scandals than in the marginal figures caught in a game whose rules are constantly being challenged.
Open Gallery

Vaccination Center2021

The Corona vaccination campaign, which started in spring 2021, is one of the fastest arranged vaccination campaings to happen in histroy. In order to realise it, large vaccination centres were built all over Germany. For this purpose, places that were otherwise important spaces for cultural and economic life were converted: Airports, theatres, exhibition halls, concert halls and swimming pools. In this work, Sebastian focuses on the temporary, repetitive, and instant architecture of the vaccination centres.
Open Gallery

La Rada di Augusta2019 - 2020

One oil refinery after another is lined up on a thirty-kilometer-long coastal strip in southeastern Sicily. The petrochemical industry has put its mark on this landscape, its inhabitants, and their lives for a good seventy years. The water, air, and soil are polluted. Corruption is as omnipresent as the distrust of authority.

La Rada di Augusta - the Bay of Augusta - emanates from the increasingly weathering remnants of turbo-capitalism merging with the ancient remains of a civilisation more than two thousand years old. Accompanying the people who live here throughout their daily lives, the series reflects upon the North-South divide and the price of rapid progress.
Open Gallery

Corona Berlin2020

This work contains a collection of observations on public life during the first lockdown imposed on Berlin in March 2020. Trying to bear witness to a state of emergency, and struggeling to confront an avalanche of news images, Sebastian's work simutanuously turned into a personal tool to combat his own loneliness.
Open Gallery

Just Brexit2016 - 2020

In 2016, Sebastian travelled to Wigan, UK, on a scholarship, to photograph the town due to its highest Brexit approval rates in the region of Greater Manchester. Once in Wigan, he started following the footsteps of Orwell's social reportage "Road to Wigan Pier", that reported about the working conditions of the coal miners in England during the 30s. Followed by this trip, he returned to England several times until the final implementation of the Brexit on the 31st of January 2020, which was accompanied by a party of Brexiteers on Parliament Square.
Open Gallery

Kienbaum2019

Commissioned by arte.tv and director Paul Ouazan, Sebastian realised a series about the German Olympic and Paralympic Training Centre in Kienbaum and former cadre training centre of the GDR. In his search for the relationship between East and West in the post-reunification generation of young athletes, Sebastian questions how it feels to persue medals for Germany today, 30 years after the fall of the Wall. The photo film can be seen here.
Open Gallery

Hong Kong Protest2019

Fascinated by the media staging and highly symbolic self-presentation of young protesters in Hong Kong, Sebastian photographed during the mass demonstrations against the Extradiction Bill in August 2019.
Open Gallery

Utopia2017 - 2018

Embarking on a visual journey through the make-shift world of refugee camps, Sebastian explores the tension between impermanence and permanence that exists in these environments. Between 2017 and 2018, he travelled to 24 refugee camps in 7 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Europe. Focusing on the everyday life of the refugees living in these supposedly temporary camps, Sebastian's images depict and explore the limits and impossibilities they impose on spatial and social infrastructure.
Open Gallery

Russia by Football2018

On assignment for the magazine 11Freunde, Sebastian travelled through Russia in 2018 during the World Cup. Unimpressed by the daily match results, he walked for hours through the host cities in search of the limits of staging at the threshold between everyday life and mass spectacle.
Open Gallery

open info

Sebastian Wells is a passionate young photographer. He is a member of the OSTKREUZ Photographer's Agency and lives in Berlin. In his images, Sebastian captures people and spaces like in a film still, as if in a moment that already anticipates the next one. In this state of limbo between the folding and unfolding of events, a space opens up for stories that have not yet been told.

CONTACT

mail@sebastianwells.de

+49 176 39 81 86 47

Instagram

currently in Berlin

AWARDS AND EXHIBITIONS

PRESS

„Das Gefühl: Die sind wie wir“ - Solomiya Magazine Der Freitag Was es in Kyiv zu verteidigen gibt - Solomiya Magazine Berliner Zeitung Magazin für junge Künstler*innen aus der Ukraine Kulturradio vom rbb Across the Great Wall - Sebastian Wells PhotoNews Migration - eine Fotografische Annäherung von Sebastian Wells, Ruchard Mosse, Michael Danner, Alexander Schippel und Sybille Fendt Museumsjournal - Kulturprojekte Berlin La Rada di Augusta van Sebastian Wells Digifotopro.nl Fotoprojekt aus Peking - "Across the Great Wall" von Sebastian Wells und Lars Spannagel RadioEins Fotoblog „Across the Great Wall“ – Ein anderer Blick auf Olympia Deutschlandfunk Kultur Fotograf Sebastian Wells: „Ich schlendere oft ziellos umher“ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Trister Euphemismus – Zwischen Heuchelei und Gelöbnis: Sebastian Wells' fotografische Arbeit „La Rada di Augusta“ Uni Bielefeld - Bonita Bonder Lisa rennt Der Tagesspiegel Unter der Impfstraße liegt das PVC Der Spiegel Von Eichwalde in die Welt Neues Deutschland FRESH EYES PHOTO 2021 GUP Magazine Siciliens par essence Courrier international „Den Leuten wird die Autonomie genommen“ Nuernberger Nachrichten Utopia - Feature Lenscuture Podcast - Kontinent - Auf der Suche nach Europa spotify Der Fotobus-Podcast spotify Quiet city: Berlin during the coronavirus pandemic Deutsche Welle Dit is Corona Der Spiegel Die Stille Stadt ARD Wenn die richtigen Worte fehlen Deutschlandfunk Nova „Abschottung ohne Grenzen“ - Symposium Neue Schule für Fotografie Youtube Zwischen den Fronten Deutschlandfunk Bewegende Bilder – was darf Sportfotografie? Deutschlandfunk Kultur Leica Oscar Barnack Award Youtube Das ewige Flüchtlingslager Deutschlandfunk Kultur Den Menschen auf der Spur Berliner Zeitung Ein Schrei für die Ewigkeit Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung Fotografieren ist immer eine Jagd Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung

REPRESENTED BY

OSTKREUZ – Photographer’s Agency

Behaimstraße 34
13086 Berlin

mail@ostkreuz.de
+49 30 47373930

Galerie Springer

Fasanenstraße 13
10623 Berlin

office@galeriespringer.de
+49 30 3157220