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Jez Marsh
the deutsche borse prize 2005
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The Deutsche Borse Photography Prize 2005, 'highlighting the best of international photography practice', to the tune of thirty grand, will be presented by The Photographers' Gallery in London on May 11th. The field consists of Luc Delahaye (France), JH Engström(Sweden), Jörg Sasse (Germany) and Stephen Shore (USA).
Remember The Cruel and Tender photography exhibition at the Tate in London a couple of years ago? Well it sprang from the hugely successful How You Look At It World Expo 2000 photo retrospective in Hanover. All the big names were shown, from Atget to Arbus. There was the Bechers, of course. Lewis Baltz, Robert Frank, Walker Evans, Bill Eggleston August Sander, Garry Winogrand. Embarrassingly if it hadn't been for Julia Margaret Cameron there wouldn't have been a single British photographer on view. Not a single photograph made by a Brit in the last hundred years was thought worthy enough.
Fox Talbot may have made modern photography possible with the two-stage process but to some curators out there, it seems, the brilliant innovation and creativity we had to offer simply does not extend beyond the mechanical. Much in the same way that we find it baffling when England fail to win the world cup there's a certain delusion at work in they way we think about ourselves.
However ambitious an undertaking it is for anyone to attempt to portray an extensive story of serious photography, and whatever flaws will inevitably arise in the choosing, it seems it is quite possible to do so without reference to us in the UK. Great photography happened elsewhere, mostly in France, Germany and America. Quite simply, to omit any one of those nations would be absurd, to omit us would not. Pointedly, all three are in the Borse 2005 shortlist.
Perhaps the only home-grown photographer who had a reasonable claim to be placed among the best is Bill Brandt, who apprenticed, incidentally, at Man Ray's Paris studio. A significant ommision but not one that was acknowledged when the How You Look At It exhibition was revamped for the Tate in 2003. Renamed Cruel and Tender, a couple of English photographers were judiciously shoe-horned in - Paul Graham and Martin Parr. Imagine trying to sell this show, though - the first exhibition at the Tate to be dedicated to photography - if it was an entirely Brit-free zone. This became a popular show and to be fair our guys didn't look out of place.
To accept that UK photography is largely irrelevant internationally is difficult, maybe impossible even for many here in the UK. As a result resolving why we have failed so spectacularly is a matter nobody seems bothered to address. Would it be just too painful to concede our higher education system doesn't know how to nurture photographic artists? Or that our curators, arts administrators and funding bodies somehow manage to stifle rather than nourish homegrown talent?
When the winner of the Borse prize is announced on May 11th we can bask in the glow of a big prize that's being awarded in London but maybe then reflect on the fact no-one in this country seems capable of competing for it.
May 11th 2005 Winner Announced: Luc Delahaye of France.