Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2010

©Anna Fox

Just opened at The Photographers’ Gallery is an exhibition of the work of Anna Fox, Zoe Leonard, Sophie Ristelhueber and Donovan Wylie - the four shortlisted artists nominated for its annual Deutsche Börse Photography Prize.

UK-born photographer Anna Fox has been nominated for her exhibition, 'Cockroach Diary & Other Stories' at Ffotogallery, Cardiff and initiated by Impressions Gallery, Bradford. Dark yet highly comical, the work is a curious blend of stark photographic evidence and written anecdotes that tell the story of a cockroach invasion in a shared house in London where the artist once lived. It is typical of the artists' wider concerns of extracting beauty from both the bizarre and the banal, particularly in relation to domestic British life. A pioneer of exciting colour documentary photography, Fox has undoubtedly helped to redefine the medium in Britain and Europe.

Also in the running for the highly coveted prize is American, Zoe Leonard, who has been selected for her retrospective exhibition, 'ZOE LEONARD: Photographs', at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, organised by Fotomuseum Winterthur. Like Fox, she takes a radically different approach to capturing and memorizing seemingly everyday things but her images offer a more subtle, visual look at the world and, in the process, reveal something of its wonderful inarticulated contradictions.

French photographer, Sophie Ristelhueber has been nominated for her retrospective, 'Sophie Ristelhueber' at the Jeu de Paume, Paris. For more than twenty years, Ristelhueber has turned her camera on people and places scarred and shaped by war and has emerged with timeless, deeply affecting images about serious world issues without resorting to tacky sentimentality.

Working with similar notions of territory and history, is the British Magnum photographer Donovan Wylie. The youngest of the four shortlisted artists, Wylie has been chosen for his exhibition 'MAZE 2007/8' at Belfast Exposed for which he spent a period of almost one hundred days photographing inside one of Ireland's most oppressive prisons (The Maze) in the aftermath of its demolition process. The only photographer granted official unlimited access to the site, he has focused on the empty landscapes to investigate the psychology of its architecture.

Brett Rogers, Chair of the Jury and Director of The Photographers' Gallery, said: "The four finalists all manifest a sustained commitment to investigating the nature and role of the photographic image. Each of them, in their own way, explores pertinent ideas around gender, nationality, surveillance and political conflict."

The annual award of £30,000 rewards a living photographer, of any nationality, who has made the most significant contribution, in exhibition or publication format, to the medium of photography in Europe between 1 October 2008 and 30 September 2009. This year's Jury is: Olivia Maria Rubio (Director of Exhibitions, La Fàbrica, Spain); Gilane Tawadros (Chief Executive, Design Artists Copyright Society, curator and writer); James Welling (artist, USA); and Anne-Marie Beckmann (Curator, Art Collection Deutsche Börse, Germany). Brett Rogers, Director of The Photographers' Gallery, is the non-voting Chair.

The exhibition went on display at The Photographers' Gallery on 12 February and runs until 18 April 2010, with the winner announced at a special award ceremony on 17 March 2010.

This article was originally published as a news story in the December/January issue of a-n magazine www.a-n.co.uk

Special x-mas book offer!

Christmas is now fast approaching and what better present to give your photography-loving friends and family than a photobook. 1000 Words is offering its readers discounts on Magnum photographer Donovan Wylie´s Maze and Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2009 winner Paul Graham’s Monograph, courtesy of Steidl. To order your copy please contact tim(at)1000wordsmag(dot)com.

Please see below for more details:

Maze
Donovan Wylie
Steidl



















All images © Donovan Wylie/Magnum Photos

Between 2002 and 2003 Donovan Wylie spent almost a hundred days photographing inside the Maze prison. Through its history of protests, hunger strikes and escapes, this prison, holding both republican and loyalist prisoners, became synonymous with the Northern Ireland conflict. After the Belfast peace agreement in 1998, inmates were gradually released, but the Maze remained open.

Wylie was then the only photographer granted official and unlimited access to the site, when the demolition of the prison began, symbolizing the end of the conflict in 2007. He systematically recorded its demise. The photographs which document this period are divided into four sections, each depicting a “layer” of the prison: the internal walls, the various modes of fencing, the H-blocks and, finally, the perimeter walls, which reveal the external landscape. Eventually this once-enclosed space is reintegrated with the outside world.

First published in 2004 to critical acclaim, this new edition of Maze comes in three volumes: Maze 2002/03, Maze 2007/08, and The Architecture of Containment.

Special price for 1000 Words readers: £45.00
Free shipping within the United Kingdom available

Essay and historical chronology by Louise Purbrick
206 pages, 150 colour plates
29.5 cm x 23.5 cm
Two hardcover books and a singer-stitched booklet housed in a slipcase
Steidl
ISBN: 978-3-86521-907-7
Publication date: April 2009

Paul Graham
Monograph
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All images © Paul Graham

Paul Graham is one of that remarkable generation of photographers born in the 1950’s who have come to dominate art photography today and who dedicated themselves to photography at a time when it was unwelcome in the art world. This book is the long awaited survey of 25 years of his photography, 1981-2006, to coincide with a large scale touring European museum exhibition. Graham was the first photographer to unite contemporary colour photography with the classic genre of social documentary.

His colour work in the early and mid-1980s had a transformative effect on the black and white tradition that had dominated British photography to that point. Since this ground breaking early work, and what sets Graham apart from his peers of that time, is that rather than rest on such achievements, he has continued to radically explore the medium for the next two decades, showing a profound commitment to expanding photography’s artistic space, whilst remaining faithful to that core locus where the documentary and artistic aspects of photography coalesce.

At a time when art photography is increasingly staged, or holds the world at a conceptualized distant view, Paul Graham's work distinguishes itself by retaining a firm and full commitment to life as it unfolds; to an understanding that at its core photography begins with an unblinking engagement with the world. Embracing this crucial axiom of photography, Graham's work of the past 25 years has been vital in reinvigorating the core of photographic practice, both by broadening it's visual language, and essentially, by questioning our notions of what such photography could say, be, or look like.

Special price for 1000 Words readers: £32.00
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Essays by David Chandler, Michael Almereyda
and Russell Ferguson
376 pages, 250 colour plates
22.5 cm x 28 cm
Hardcover
steidlMACK
ISBN: 978-3-86521-858-2
Publication date: July 2009