Artist Adrian Sauer focuses on the impact that digitization has had on photography and the changes it has wrought: with the help of computer programs he has written himself, Sauer examines photographic functionality and considers the extent to which photography can still be regarded as a reliable and impartial means of mapping reality. This theme also features in his project Truth Table, which is based on the truth tables used in mathematics to check the substance of logical statements. Truth Table alludes to a binary pattern of thinking in which information is sorted into mutually exclusive categories – similar to binary code, in which the only options are 0 and 1, with nothing in between. Binary codes are used to represent and process information in digital form. Adrian Sauer’s photographic work will be honoured this autumn with the award of Stiftung Niedersachsen’s prestigious SPECTRUM International Prize for Photography, whose previous recipients include Rineke Dijkstra, Boris Mikhailov, and Marta Rosler.

Adrian Sauer, born 1976, Berlin, is a photographer who lives and works in Leipzig. Lavinia Francke is secretary general of Stiftung Niedersachsen, which awards the SPECTRUM International Prize for Photography. Steffen Siegel is Professor of the Theory and History of Photography at Folkwang University of the Arts, Essen.