Hamburg’s »Patriotische Gesellschaft« has awarded the Stipendium Dokumentarfotografie to students or graduates of the HFBK Hamburg every two years since 1992.

After an interruption in 2008, this scholarship prize was reinvented in 2010 and awarded again under the name »scheinbar sichtbar - Fotografie als Dokument und Projektion«.

This was done in order to do justice to developments in photography – both in how photography is seen and in the technical transformation of the medium - since the scholarship prize was first introduced. Documentary photography has long since grown beyond the concept of simply bearing witness and the tradition of social documentary or thematic photojournalism to become a major branch of artistic photography. At a university of the fine arts in particular, the focus of photography is less on authentic »it was like this« documentation than on photography as an artistic medium that researches and examines reality.
In the exhibition that accompanies the selection process, applicants present their artwork to the public and to the jury.