Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2019


Interesting exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery featuring the four finalists in this year’s Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize.

The competition identifies and rewards innovation an excellence in photography. This is not only for the photographs themselves but also in exhibitions, projects or books by the photographers nominated.

Two of the photographers have recorded conflicts. Arwed Messmer showed how pictures used in the investigation of the Red Army Faction in Germany now provide a different insight into the history of this period. OK I admit as I didn’t know this bit of history so the photographs didn’t mean a lot to me and the display didn’t really enlighten me. Having said that I liked the tall pictures of the bookcases in cells. Susan Meiselas was nominated for a retrospective of her work including her ongoing project on Kurdistan.

Laia Abril’s work was for a book investigating abortion throughout the world. I found it a hard watch. There were moving testaments from women made into displays with their words, a portrait and picture either from their living surroundings or where the procedure took place. It did get me thinking however I felt it was nominated more for the subject than the photographs.

The only set I liked were by Mark Ruwedel and they recorded changes in the American landscape using historic photographic processes. I loved the set revisiting apartments which had been painted by Ruscha and the Ansel Adams like landscapes. I felt these were great pictures as well as an important story.

Closes on 2 June 2019

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