In his documentary-artistic work, Valentin Goppel explores broad social questions. Drawing on his own experiences, he investigates the power of human longing while simultaneously questioning the concept of objective truth in photography.

Since 2023, he has been traveling across the United States for his long-term project “False Prophet Radio”, without a fixed route. Beyond its political and social relevance, the project is deeply autobiographical: Goppel sets out in search of an imagined America that became a projected link within a story of family estrangement. He embarks on this journey alone, not a child anymore, but not yet fully an adult. Through multiple trips across the American West, he examines his own sense of rootlessness while creating a subjective portrait of both individual and societal ambivalence, shaped by reality, change, and the longings associated with them.

In 2022, Goppel received the Leica Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award for his previous series, “Zwischen den Jahren” (“Between the Years”). This body of work offers a distinctive and compelling portrayal of the so-called “Corona Generation.”