Elena Helfrecht (b. 1992 in Bavaria; based in London and Bavaria) is a visual artist working with photography. She completed her MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art in London in 2019 with Distinction, after studying Art and Image History at Humboldt-Universität in Berlin from 2016 to 2017 and receiving her BA in Art History and Book Science from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität in Erlangen in 2015. Elena’s work has been exhibited and published internationally. In 2020, she was nominated for the Foam Paul Huf Award and awarded 2nd place in the Professional Stilllife category at the Sony World Photography Awards. She was a winner of Camera Work hosted by Palazzo Rasponi 2, and a finalist for the HSBC Prix pour la Photographie, the PHMuseum Photography Grant, and The Aftermath Project Grant. Her work was selected by the Bloomberg New Contemporaries in 2019, shown at South London Gallery and Leeds Art Gallery, and as a Jury Favourite for the Le Bal Award for Young Creation, as well as a winner of the AOP Student Awards, Magenta Flash Forward, and the Ginnel Foto Award in the same year. Elena’s images have been featured by numerous publications such as the British Journal of Photography, GUP Magazine, HANT Magazin, Der Greif, and ‘On Death’ by Kris Graves Projects and the Humble Arts Foundation, which was one of Time’s 30 Best Photobooks of 2019.
