Born in 1950 in Göttingen, Gerhard Steidl founded his publishing house and screen-printing workshop for graphic art and posters in 1969. Today Steidl publishes the largest worldwide program of contemporary photobooks and a select German literature list. In 2020 he received the Outstanding Contribution to Photography prize at the Sony World Photography Awards and the Gutenberg Prize from the International Gutenberg Society in Mainz. In 2021 Steidl received the Grand Cross of Merit of Lower Saxony, and the publishing house the Deutscher Verlagspreis. He is the initiator and founding director of Kunsthaus Göttingen. In 2023 Steidl was made a full member of the German Photographic Society and in 2024 he received the Cultural Award from the German Photographic Society. In 2025 Blind magazine named Steidl second on their list of the 100 Most Influential People in the Photography Industry.