Deutsche Börse photography prize 2013

It is probably fair to say that amongst photographers I know this prize is the most controversial. The photographers shortlisted almost always reflect the edges of photography where camera skills and traditional subject matter are of little importance. For example one of the short listed artists, Mishka Henner,  for the prize this year presents pictures from the google street view car cameras where he has selected views that include street sex workers.

Mishka Henner, Carretera de Fortuna, Murcia, Spain, 2012

Another, Cristina de Middel, who reimagines the 60s space programme in Zambia. I know it barely warrants thinking about

Cristina De Middel, The Afronauts, 2012

Chris Killip is probably the only name you might recognise and the only one on the shortlist that makes photographs like a photographer.

Chris Killip, Youth on Wall, Jarrow, Tyneside, 1976

Chris Killip (b. 1946, UK) is nominated for his exhibition What Happened – Great Britain 1970 –1990 at LE BAL, Paris (12 May – 19 August 2012).

British born Killip has been taking photographs for nearly five decades.What Happened – Great Britain comprises black and white images of working people in the north of England, taken by Killip in the 1970s and 1980s. After spending months immersed in several communities, Killip documented the disintegration of the industrial past with a poetic and highly personal point of view.

The final artists shortlisted for this prize are

Adam Broomberg (b. 1970, South Africa) and Oliver Chanarin (b. 1971, UK) are nominated for their publication War Primer 2 (MACK, 2012).

War Primer 2 is a limited edition book that physically inhabits the pages of Bertold Brecht’s remarkable 1955 publication War Primer. Brecht’s photo-essay comprises 85 images, photographic fragments or collected newspaper clippings, that were placed next to a four-line poem, called ‘photo-epigrams’. Broomberg and Chanarin layered Google search results for the poems over Brecht’s originals.

For full details of the  Deutsche Börse photography prize 2013 There is an exhibition at The Photographers Gallery and much more information here 

For a much more teeth grinding experience have a look at the video on the Guardian website  where the excellent Sean O’Hagen discusses the work with the photographers/artists involved. Sean O’Hagan meets the nominees for the annual Deutsche Börse photography prize: Mishka Henner, who puts Google Street View to imaginative use; Cristina de Middel, who reimagines the 60s space programme in Zambia; Chris Killip, who asks What Happened, Great Britain; and duo Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, who have reworked a Bertolt Brecht book.

It is hard to tell if this prize and exhibition actually does good or bad for photography. Most people seeing the work of these four artists would recognise Chris Killip as a photographer but would struggle with the other three.

further reading on the Guardian website comes courtesy of Adrian Searle

A sociologist by training, Henner presents (or rather, re-presents) the images without comment. Henner annoys me. For other projects, he has digitally removed the figures from Robert Frank’s The Americans, and overlain Gerhard Richter’s blurry, photographically based paintings with words and phrases taken from Ed Ruscha’s work. Ho ho, you say. Real complexity lies elsewhere……….It was never going to get off the ground. De Middel’s photographs, drawings and re-photographed letters conflate original material with her own reconstructions and fantasy. A space camp shelters under a boabab tree; cosmonauts wander through a village of straw huts; a man in a wax-batik patterned spacesuit struggles through a cane field. Yinka Shonibare has presented a family of astronauts in similar garb floating in mid-air. What goes around comes around. All this works better in the little self-published book De Middel made of her project – now out of print and selling, I am told, for more than £1,000.

can you be bothered to learn more about these three artists and one photographer if so go here

What do you think?

Deutsche Börse photography prize 2012 – in pictures

We have featured this prize before, now The Guardian shows the images again and provides a review by Adrian Searle

Pieter Hugo, Rinko Kawauchi, John Stezaker and Christopher Williams are the four photographers shortlisted for this year’s £30,000 Deutsche Börse photography prize. Their work goes on display at The Photographers’ Gallery from 13 July – 9 September 2012. View some of their images here

Adrian Searle: John Stezaker’s work is by miles the best here, with that great unteachable gift: an eye and a sensibility

John Stezaker, Siren Song V, 2011 Photograph: Courtesy of the artist and The Approach, London

Pieter Hugo, Yakubu Al Hasan, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra, Ghana, 2009 Photograph: Pieter Hugo/Courtesy of Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town and Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

Christopher Williams, Fachhochschule Aachen, Fachbereich Gestaltung, Studiengang: Visuelle Kommunikation, Fotolabor für Studenten, Boxgraben 100, Aachen, 8 November, 2010 Photograph: Christopher Williams/Courtesy Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne

Read Adrian Searle’s review

Yeah I don’t get it either……

Deutsche Börse prize shortlist

The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize aims to reward a contemporary photographer of any nationality, who has made the most significant contribution (exhibition or publication) to the medium of photography in Europe in the previous year.

The Prize was originally set up in 1996 by The Photographers’ Gallery in London to promote the best of contemporary photography. Deutsche Börse has sponsored the £30,000 prize since 2005. The Prize showcases new talents and highlights the best of international photography practice. It is one of the most prestigious prizes in the world of photography. The Photographers’ Gallery and Deutsche Börse were shortlisted for Arts & Business International Award 2008 for their cooperation in the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize.

Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2012

The four shortlisted artists for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2012 are Pieter Hugo, Rinko Kawauchi, John Stezaker and Christopher Williams.

Work by the shortlisted photographers will be shown in an exhibition at The Photographers’ Gallery, Summer 2012, followed by its presentations at C/O Berlin, Forum for visual dialogs and at the Deutsche Börse headquarters in Frankfurt.

Sean O’Hagan writing in The Guardian gives his view of the 4 shortlist photographers/artists or should that be artist/photographers?

“The 2012 Deutsche Börse photography prize shortlist is an intriguing one, not least because of the range of styles and subject matter broached by the four nominees. Interestingly, two of the photographers, Japan’s Rinko Kawauchi and South Africa’s Pieter Hugo, are nominated for work presented in book form, while both of the photographers nominated for their exhibitions, Britain’s John Stezaker and Christopher Williams from the US, are not photographers per se, but conceptual artists who use photography in their practice…………………..Decision time. The judges’ verdict seldom chimes with my wishful thinking – Jim Goldberg’s win, this year, was the exception to that rule – but, for the record, my heart says Kawauchi, but my head says Hugo. As is often the case with the Deutsche Börse prize, I may well be shaking my head in bemusement when the winner is announced next year.” read more here

Detail of Christopher Williams’s Bergische Bauernscheune, Junkersholz, Leichlingen, September 29th, 2009, 2010. Photograph: 1996-98 AccuSoft Inc

Detail of John Stezaker’s Marriage (Film Portrait Collage), XLIII, 2007. Photograph: Courtesy of the artist and The Approach, London

Rinko Kawauchi, Untitled, from Illuminance, 2009. Photograph: Rinko Kawauchi

Detail of Pieter Hugo’s Yakubu Al Hasan, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra, Ghana, 2009. Photograph: Pieter Hugo/Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town and Yossi Milo Gallery, New York