Winner DuPho. SO Award 2025
Lotte Lisa Ekkel (NL, 1988) is a self-taught photographer based in Amsterdam. She works without a fixed plan, capturing poetic and intuitive images using only natural light. She finds beauty in quiet, often overlooked moments, creating photographs that invite reflection.
Light is both her subject and her guide. Photography captures light, yet light itself has no sense of time—it moves in a constant now. Time only takes shape when light touches something, enters an eye, or sparks a memory. Ekkel’s images exist in that moment, where light and the world come together to create meaning.
Her compositions are precise and graphic, often with a painterly flatness that makes spaces feel abstract. She is drawn to in-between places, where time seems to pause and emptiness has a quiet presence. Her work explores the balance between what we see and what we sense, encouraging the viewer to slow down and notice fleeting beauty.
From the jury report
‘Lotte offers a consistent portfolio. This series is hard to put into words. The work is enormously spherical and stands like a house. The images are abstract, but the presence of man – and the photographer himself – can be found repeatedly in the form of silhouettes or shadows. The use of colour is beautiful and with care and attention the photographer grasps the intangible. Pure poetry.’
DuPho. SO’25
This 10th edition of Selection of Dutch Photography counts 15 winners; the entire selection of SO’25 represents one winning entity.
These are the photographers who receive the title of Selection of Dutch Photography ‘25: Fidelio Faustino Ferrier, Olivier Tuinier, Lotte Lisa Ekkel, Rob Hornstra, Bonnita Postma, Prins de Vos, Femke Reijerman, Eelco Wortman, Ronald Tilleman, Tengbeh Kamara, Erik van Cuyk and students Klaas, Olivia Tudor, Anna-Raven Bloten and Eliza-Sophie Sekrève.
SO’25 expo
The work of the selection will be on display during the SO’25 expo at Melkweg Expo from 9 to 11 May and can also be seen on bus shelters around Amsterdam’s Leidseplein.
