The photographer and video artist Tobias Zielony (*1973 in Wuppertal, living and working in Berlin) studied at the University of Wales, Newport, UK and the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig. Since 2009, he is a professor of Artistic Photography at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne. In 2011, he was awarded the Karl Ströher prize in Darmstadt. Zielony became known for his photographic documentations of marginalized groups. The portrait series were made in Marseille, Naples, Los Angeles, Bristol and Manitoba, Canada and combine intimacy with distance. Zielony works without spotlights and flash, only with the existing light. In the laboratory, only the color is processed, the framing remains authentic.

Tobias Zielony exhibited, among others, in the German Pavilion, 56th Venice Biennale (2015); Berlinische Galerie (2013); Ludwig Forum Aachen (2012); Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt/Main (2011); Philadelphia Museum of Art (2011); Kunstverein Dortmund and Kunstverein Hamburg (2010); Kunsthalle Vienna, Ursula Blickle Videolounge (2010); Museum für Photographie Braunschweig (2009); Centre de Cultura Contemporània, Barcelona (2008).

Neuer Berliner Kunstverein offers ten copies of Drift (2009), in the capital of the Canadian province of Manitoba, Winnipeg. The portrait of a teenager was made at a gas station, which for young people started to become a meeting point and venue. Here, there is a large social gap between the indigenous population and the white middle class.