Wolfgang Zurborn is a German photographer, teacher and curator based in Cologne. Born in Ludwigshafen in 1956, he studied photography in Munich and Dortmund. In 1985 he received the Otto Steinert Fellowship from the German Society of Photography (DGPh), and his book Drift won the German Photo Book Award in 2008. His work has been shown across Europe and the United States, including at Museum Folkwang in Essen and the Haus der Photographie at Deichtorhallen Hamburg.
His book Crowds (Kehrer Verlag, 2026) brings together colour photographs from the 1980s and 1990s, made at political, sporting, religious, tourist and entertainment events. During the pandemic lockdown he went back to these negatives and scanned hundreds of them. Many had never been marked on his contact sheets. The book has 272 pages, 131 photographs and an interview with the curator Alasdair Foster.
Since 1986 he has run Galerie Lichtblick in Cologne with Tina Schelhorn, and in 2010 he founded the Lichtblick School. He teaches photography and leads photobook workshops. When he edits a book, he follows one rule: ‘Listen to the photographs.’
