Josefine Rauch
Germany
Biography
Josefine Rauch is a photographer based in Offenbach am Main, Germany.
Her work investigates the dynamic tension between community and individuality, navigating spaces of closeness and distance. She explores themes of belonging, displacement, and in-betweenness, and is particularly interested in moments of isolation and the quiet stories revealed through overlooked details in everyday environments. Through subtle encounters and shifts in perspective, she reflects on how community is formed, questioned, and emotionally experienced.
She holds an MA in Aesthetics from Goethe University Frankfurt (2020) and studied Fine Arts, Television, Film, and Media as a guest student at California State University, Los Angeles. In 2021 she began to develop her personal photographic work and attended conceptual documentary classes at the Ostkreuz School of Photography in Berlin until 2024. She also participated in the 2022 Art Foto Mode program in Athens, Berlin, and Budapest. Her mentors have included Rafal Milach, Vanessa Winship, George Georgiou, Sylvia Sachini, Tim Clark, and Michael Grieve.
In July 2024, she was selected for Alec Soth’s “Workshop at Home” in Minneapolis and is now part of Ute and Werner Mahler Class at Ostkreuz School for Photography.
Her project Temple Road was shortlisted for the LensCulture New Visions Award + Portrait Award 2025, Trieste Photo Days 2024 (selected by Harry Gruyaert), Athens Photo Festival 2024, and the Urbanautica Institute Awards 2023.
Project
“Gorndorf, Texas” by Josefine Rauch is a conceptual documentary photography project that explores how romanticised visions of the American Wild West are embraced and reenacted far from their original context — not in Texas itself, but in Gorndorf, a small town in what was once East Germany. The series examines how Wild West enthusiasts in the region adopt roles as Cowboys, Native Americans and frontier figures to pursue their own version of the American Dream amidst the dreary, decaying concrete landscapes of the former Eastern Bloc, a place where GDR citizens long dreamed of open prairie life and the vastness of the frontier. The work touches on nostalgia, escapism and longing, and centres around Gorndorf, where the artist grew up and where her cousin lives as a “modern cowboy”, creating a stylised, almost mythical sense of place that reflects cultural yearning and imaginative reinterpretation of history.
