My photographic work focuses on landscapes and structures that exist at the margins of visibility: ruins, sacred sites, abandoned infrastructures, peripheral architectures, and environments shaped by utopian ambition and historical change.
I am interested in places that appear suspended between different conditions, between construction and decay, memory and disappearance, ideology and everyday reality.
Biography
Gunnar Knechtel (b. 1970, Germany) is a photographer based in Barcelona.
After studying photography at the Lette Verein in Berlin, he began working for magazines in London before developing a long-term practice centred on landscape, architecture, and place.
His projects investigate overlooked landscapes, sacred sites, ruins, and environments shaped by political, social, and cultural ambition.
Recent work has focused on planned cities such as Brasília, Chandigarh, and Astana, as well as frontón walls in rural Spain and sacred stones and ruins across Europe.
His photographs have been exhibited internationally and published in magazines including The Guardian, Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, Der Stern, El País Semanal, Colors, and Apartamento.
SELECTED AWARDS
1999 Observer Hodge Award, “Daily Life in China”, UK
2005 Fotonoviembre, “Chabolas de Madrid”, Spain
2014 Natja Award, USA
2018 PDN Award
2023 Winner of Portfolio Review, Revela’T Festival,
“Frontón Walls in Spanish Villages”
2023 Shortlisted, Getxophoto Festival,
“Frontón Walls in Spanish Villages”
2025 Shortlisted, Sony World Photography Awards,
“Between Ruins and Sacred Stones”
2025–26 Grant from Kulturwerk der VG Bild-Kunst
supporting the ongoing project Ruins and Sacred Stones in Europe
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2003 Overbeck Gesellschaft, Lübeck, Photography and Everyday Reality
2005 Fotonoviembre, Isla de Tenerife, Chabolas de Madrid
2005 Spectrum Sotos Gallery, Chabolas de Madrid
2011 Gallery One and a Half, London, Behind Bars
2021 Oberfett Gallery, Hamburg, Birds of Barcelona
2024 FineArt Igualada, Frontón Walls in Spanish Villages
2024 Revela’T Festival, Frontón Walls in Spanish Villages
