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Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2008
Press Release - October 2007
The four shortlisted photographers for this annual award are:
John Davies, Fazal Sheikh, Esko Männikkö and Jacob Holdt.
The exhibition of the nominated artists' work will run between February and April 2008 with the winner of the prize announced on Wednesday
5 March 2008.
John Davies (b. 1949, UK), nominated for The British Landscape at the National Media Museum, Bradford, UK (13 October 2006 – 4 February 2007). His panoramic black & white photographs, taken between
1979 – 2005, document the changing post-industrial British landscape. Coolly detached and combining the monumental with the banal, these works are an ongoing and in-depth study of the relationship between our social, economic and industrial history.
Fazal Sheikh (b. 1965, USA). nominated for his publication Ladli, published by Steidl, Germany (2007). Sheikh is an artist-activist who uses photography to create sustained portraits of different communities around the world. His latest project Ladli examines the effects of enduring prejudices against women in contemporary Indian society and highlights – through his powerful black-and-white portraits and the accompanying individual testimonies - the extent to which some women in India are still victims of ancient religious and cultural codes.
Esko Männikö (b. 1959, Finland), nominated for his retrospective Cocktails 1990 - 2007 at Millesgarden, Stockholm, Sweden
(1 September – 4 November 2007). A portraitist of isolation, Männikkö documents with great humour, warmth and integrity the lives of those who inhabit the periphery. Cocktails featured a selection of portraits, still life and landscape photographs from series such as Finnish Series, Organized Freedom and Harmony Sisters. Shown in assorted wooden frames, found and weathered by time, his images acquire a timeless, almost painterly quality.
Jacob Holdt (b. 1947, Denmark), nominated for his publication Jacob Holdt, United States 1970 – 1975, published by Steidl, Germany (2007). In the early 1970s, Holdt spent five years hitchhiking across the US, living with and documenting the lives of the people he met - from the poorest Southern sharecroppers to some of America’s wealthiest families. Part travelogue, part political essay his images expose social and racial injustice in Nixon’s Amercia and present a powerful tale of human intimacy, poverty, alienation and protest.
The Jury for this year is:
Els Barents, Director, Huis Marseille (The Netherlands), Jem Southam, photographer (UK), Thomas Weski, Chief Curator, Haus der Kunst (Germany) and Anne-Marie Beckmann, Curator, Art Collection Deutsche Börse (Germany). The Chair is Brett Rogers.
Deutsche Börse Group is the world largest exchange organisation and a major sponsor of photographic art. The Group owns an extensive art collection of contemporary photography which, to date, includes more than 500 works, most of them large-scale, by over 50 international artists. In addition, Deutsche Börse organises exhibitions for young artists in the Group’s global headquarters in Frankfurt and sponsors photographic exhibitions in Europe.
Previous Result
The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize jury chose Walid Raad/The Atlas Group as the 2007 winner. At an award ceremony at The Photographers' Gallery Walid Raad was awarded the £30,000 prize. (Philippe Chancel was voted favourite by the Gallery’s visitor’s poll.)
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