Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2011

As a key event in the UK's photography calender, the 15th Deutsche Börse Photography Prize has finally opened it's doors at Ambika P3. The winner, to be heralded as the photographer who has made "the most significant contribution to photography in Europe between 1 October 2009 and 30 September 2010", will be announced on the 26 April from the shortlist of Thomas Demand, Roe Ethridge, Jim Goldberg, and Elad Lassry.















© Thomas Demand, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn/ DACS

Demand’s concise yet strangely unsettling images explore German social and political life, with spaces ranging from the interior of the Bonn Parliament in the late 1960s to the artist’s’ childhood room. His works subtly reveal the mechanisms of their making, and challenge the viewer’s perception of reality by examining memory and photographic truth.






















© Roe Ethridge/ Courtesy of Greengrassi London/ Andrew Kreps Gallery/ Mai 36 Gallery

Blurring the boundaries of the commercial with the editorial, and the mundane with the highbrow, Roe Ethridge’s conceptual approach to photography is a playful comment on the traditions and conventions of the medium itself. Often borrowing ‘outtakes’ from his own commercial photography work, Ethridge readily juxtaposes a catwalk shot with a still-life of a pumpkin or a pastoral scene of cows grazing. His distinct yet elusive and poetic groupings of portraits, landscapes and still lifes, create new associations and embrace the arbitrariness of the image and image making.


















© Jim Goldberg/ Magnum Photos

Jim Goldberg’s series Open See documents the experiences of refugee, immigrant and trafficked populations who travel from war torn, socially and economically devastated countries to make new lives in Europe. Originating from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, these ‘new Europeans’ have met violence and brutality as well as hope and liberation in their new homes. Goldberg employs his varied and experimental approaches to photographic storytelling to reflect on issues of migration and the conditions for desiring escape through the exploitation of a range of photographic vernacular and moving image.


















Image © Elad Lassry, Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery

In his seductive yet detached photographs and films, Elad Lassry highlights the strange in the over-familiar. Drawing on source material such as advertising and stock imagery for inspiration, Lassry’s over-saturated photographs are often collages of pre-existing images or newly staged studio photographs that allude to the visual language of product photography. Constantly shifting between ‘original’ and found materials, Lassry instigates a dialogue between photography and the moving image to explore ideas of authorship, originality and appropriation.

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Evan Baden

All images © Evan Baden

Congratulations to Evan Baden who was June´s winner of theprintspace photography competition - portrait theme. After spending a long time reviewing all the entries the judges managed to narrow down the finalists and eventually agree that Evan Baden´s series The Illuminati merited the top slot. Speaking about the project, he says:

"In Westernized cultures today, there is a generation that is growing up without the knowledge of what it is to be disconnected. The world in which we are growing up is always on. We are continuously plugged in, and linked up. We take this technology for granted. Not because we are ungrateful, but because we simply don’t know a world without it. From our earliest memories, there has always been a way to connect with others whether it is Myspace, Facebook, cell phones, email, or instant messenger. And now, with the Internet, instant messaging, and email in our pocket, right there with our phones, we can always feel as if we are part of a greater whole. These devices grace us with the ability to instantly connect to others, and at the same time, they isolate us from those with whom we are connected. They allow for great freedom, yet so often, we are chained to them. They have become part of who we are and how we identify ourselves. These devices ordain us with a wealth of knowledge and communication that would have been unbelievable a generation ago. More and more, we are bathed in a silent, soft, and heavenly blue glow. It is as if we carry divinity in our pockets and purses."

Born in 1985, Baden attended the College of Visual Arts. In 2007, he graduated with a BFA in Photography. Since then, he has exhibited work in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. His work has been added to the collections of the Walker Art Center, Milwaukee Art Museum, and The Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. In November of 2008, he was named as one of the five Jerome Fellows for the 2008-2009 year. He received $10,000 to continue and make new work. The work that he is currently making will be exhibited at the MCAD Gallery in October of 2009.