Description
OD Photo Prize 2025 | Judges Pick
Uta Genilke [1964] is a German graphic designer, photographer and bookmaker. Her own collected snapshots merge with found archive material, video stills or family photos into a deep sensual experience, as she transfers her dreams, longings and fears into books.
Artist Statement | How To Fly is the story of my father Sigi, who worked for Pan American World Airways for 32 years. Sigi grew up in modest circumstances, the eldest son in a Silesian family of farm workers who had moved to Hamburg. Thanks to a caring teacher, he was the only child in the family allowed to attend a higher secondary school – located in a villa district near the Alster river. A new world opened up: class trips, theatre plays, elegant clothes – and dreams. He was in charge of the large wall maps in the geography room, and I imagine him tracing lines to distant places: New York, San Francisco, Honolulu, Israel, the Fiji Islands – all destinations he would one day visit. His wish to become a pilot never came true. Instead, he became an aircraft mechanic. In the late 1950s, he joined Pan Am, where he finally received the training and recognition he had longed for. He spent weeks at a time in London or Brussels, returning with thick binders full of technical drawings that sat around on our living room cabinet. Sigi worked shifts at Hamburg Airport for more than 30 years. We didn’t see him often, but sometimes he brought home little treasures: airline chocolate, leftover petits fours, Pan Am calendars. Slide boxes documented my parents’ travels. A glass of volcanic ash from Hawaii stood on the living room shelf. As a young woman, I often flew standby for ten Deutschmarks across the Atlantic or to Berlin. I knew the way to his office by heart. No security check. The ticking teleprinter, the smell of coffee and smoke, the roar of planes. When I visited, Sigi lit up. We sat and watched the runway, and he talked and laughed more than he did at home. He drove me to the aircraft himself, and often arranged a seat in the cockpit or even in first class. The day of the Lockerbie bombing in 1988 was the saddest of his life. 270 people died – among them, a stewardess he knew. When Pan Am went bankrupt in 1991, he was devastated. Suddenly unemployed, he had to apply for benefits for the first time – and was deeply ashamed. Delta gave him a short reprieve, but then left Hamburg. In the last 20 years of his life, he spoke little. He spent his days on the green sofa, solving crossword puzzles, thousands of them. After his death in 2015, I began collecting materials: photographs, flight manuals, love letters. I wanted to make a book about a man who experienced the golden age of aviation and brought some of its distant shimmer into our modest home.
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