Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2017

About

The winner will be announced at a special award ceremony during the exhibition.

Sophie Calle (b.1953, France) has been nominated for her publication My All (Actes Sud, 2016) which finds the artist experimenting with yet another medium - the postcard set. Taking stock of her entire œuvre, this set of postcards functions as a beautiful portfolio of Calle’s work, as well as a new investigation of it, in an appropriately nomadic format. Over the past thirty years, Sophie Calle has invited strangers to sleep in her bed, followed a man through the streets of Paris to Venice, hired a detective to spy on herself before providing a report of her day, and asked blind people to tell her about the final image they remember. In doing so, she has orchestrated small moments of life, establishing a game, then setting its rules for herself and for others.

Dana Lixenberg (b. 1964, The Netherlands) has been nominated for her publication Imperial Courts (Roma, 2015). In 1992 Dana Lixenberg travelled to South Central Los Angeles for a magazine story on the riots that erupted following the verdict in the Rodney King trial. What she encountered inspired her to revisit the area and led her to the community of the Imperial Courts housing project in Watts. Returning countless times over the following twenty-two years Lixenberg gradually created a collaborative portrait of the changing face of this community.

Awoiska van der Molen (b. 1972, The Netherlands) has been nominated for her exhibition Blanco at Foam Fotografie Museum, Amsterdam (22 Jan - 3 Apr 2016). Van der Molen creates black and white abstracted images that revitalise landscape photography. Spending long periods of time in solitude and silence in foreign landscapes, from Japan to Norway to Crete, she explores the identity of theplace, allowing it to impress upon her its specific emotional and physical qualities and her personal experience within it.

Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs (both b. 1979, Switzerland) have been nominated for their exhibition EURASIA at Fotomuseum Winterthur (24 Oct 15 – 14 Mar 16). EURASIA playfully draws on the iconography of the road trip constructing experiences drawn from memory and  imagination. Onorato and Krebs’ journey begins in Switzerland, continues through the Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, and ends in Mongolia. Throughout their travels the duo encounter landscapes and people in a state of ongoing transition from ancient traditions and post-Communist structures to modernity and the formation of an independent identity. Using a mix of analogue media and techniques including 16mm films, large-format plate cameras and installation-based interventions, Onorato and Krebs compose a narrative that is as much fiction as documentation.

This year’s judges are:

Susan Bright (Curator), Pieter Hugo (Artist), Karolina Lewandowka (Curator of Photography, Centre Pompidou), Anne-Marie Beckmann (Director, Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation) and Clare Grafik (Head of Exhibitions, The Photographers’ Gallery) as the non-voting chair.

The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize is an annual exhibition and award of £30,000 presented at The Photographers’ Gallery, London (and subsequently to select venues). Originally established by the Gallery in 1996 as the UK’s first dedicated photography award, it continues to identify, debate and celebrate innovative and original photographic practice from across the world.

Open to any living photographer and body of work (across any format or genre) produced and/or exhibited in Europe the previous year, the Prize rewards outstanding contribution towards the photographic medium and reflects the myriad ways photography engages with the world today.    

2017 marks the Prize’s 20-year anniversary and reaffirms its position as a barometer of talent and excellence, introducing photographers and works that exemplify exceptional viewpoints and bold practice to wide audiences.