Claudio Hils
Born in 1962.
Trained in photojournalism, photographer and communication designer Claudio Hils has developed a body of work marked by long-term studies of socio-political change and by an alternation between institutional commissions and personal projects. From 1985 to 1993, he studied Kommunikationsdesign at GHS Universität Essen, specialising in photojournalism. Alongside his work as a photographer, he has taught at several institutions since 1998, and in 2008 he was appointed Professor of Photography and Design at the Fachhochschule Vorarlberg.
Among the most extensively documented bodies of work in his oeuvre is Neuland, a long-term study initiated in 1989 on the transformations of the new German Länder following the fall of the Wall. The project resulted in a publication entitled Neuland, issued in 1999 by Braus Verlag in Heidelberg. His practice also includes institutional commissions: he was commissioned by the European Central Bank to document the creation of the euro, a project referred to as The Making of the Euro.
In 2004, the Fotografie-Museum Amsterdam commissioned him to produce a work at the intersection of documentary practice and artistic approach on the Netherlands national football team, referred to in the sources as TEAM.NL. These examples illustrate the dual orientation of his practice: on the one hand, long-term photographic investigations into social transformations; on the other, works produced at the request of institutions or museums.