Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, The Photographers' Gallery

The £30,000 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize is one of the biggest awards available to artists in the UK. But to call it a photography prize is to undersell it: looking at the shortlist, the Deutsche Börse prize would be better described as an award for artists who use photography. We see artists combining photography with video, found objects, text and performance. In fact, anyone expecting straightforward photography may find some of the nominees contentious. 

Lorna Simpson is notable for making use of a whole range of media in the name of photography, incorporating text, video and performance into her work. Alberto García-Alix’s practice, on the other hand, is far more rooted in the craft of image making. He has been nominated for his publication Autorretrato, a photo book that adds up to one big self-portrait, though it’s not as self-regarding as it sounds. The product of 40 years’ work, its contents reflect the political upheavals experienced in the artist’s native Spain during that time. By contrast, fellow nominee Jochen Lempert’s photographs are beautifully precise studies of the minutiae of the natural world. However, the most striking of the four nominated bodies of work comes from Richard Mosse (read our special preview on Mosse here) . His photographs of the conflict in Democratic Republic of Congo are shot using a film stock intended for use in military surveillance, which is sensitive to the infra-red spectrum. The resulting images are otherworldly yet starkly intimate.

The shortlisted artist/photographers are exhibited at the Photographers Gallery this April. We definitely recommend having a look. The exhibition opens at the Photographers’ Gallery on 11 April and continues until 22 June.