The DNRF Photo Competition 2023
The DNRF Photo Competition 2023
For the sixth year in a row, the foundation has launched a photo competition based on the potential of photography as documentation and communication of research.
Here, you can see the winning pictures and 10 additional photos submitted for this year’s competition that made a special impression on the panel.
Selection criteria:
- Degree to which the photo evokes emotions in the observer
- Degree to which the photo works as a visual entry point to the story behind the specific research result
- Aesthetic quality of the photo
The Panel
- Christine Buhl Andersen, Chair of the New Carlsberg Foundation
- Louise Wolthers, Research Manager/Curator at the Hasselblad Foundation
- Minik Rosing, Professor at GLOBE Institute, vice chair aof the DNRF board and board member at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
1st Prize: Perseverance

The panels review:
The image creates compassion and indignation about global inequality in relation to medical treatment, which privileged people consider natural – but which many do not have access to – with debilitating consequences. The picture has a fine aesthetic quality in the tradition of social documentary photography. The rug symbolizes caretaking and helps to establish materiality in the motif. The mask is a time marker.
2nd prize: Infected Cell

The panels review:
At first glance, the picture illustrates an explosion that hurls infection from a dying bacterium. The picture communicates the research method, but at the same time, it has a delicate aesthetic watercolor tone.