The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2022

Eclectic exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery for this year’s Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize for work published or exhibited in the previous 12 months.

I always try to get to this show and it can be a bit of a mixed bag. As ever there were four photographers highlighted.

I think my favourite was Anastasia Samoylova whose work looked at the environmental crisis in American coastal cities. I loved the abstract shapes created by the damage as in the attached picture. Her work was shown as big bold works against a striking green and purple background.

Jo Ratcliffe’s work recorded conflict and dispossession in South Africa and Angola shown in a white room to contrast with the previous works. I would have liked to have been able to read more of the stories that went with this harrowing works.

Denna Lawson, who won this year’s prize, showed work which challenged the conventional representation of Black Lives through encounters with strangers and planned scenes. The pictures were in mirrored frames which reflected light out of them plus put us the viewer into the picture. Some had holograms inserted which were sometimes hard to see.

Finally Giles Peress recorded life in Northern Ireland since the 1970s using photography to understand life in a conflict zone. He used the idea of 22 semi-fictional days  to tell the story. It was interesting to see the work displayed in different formats from the single prints to the book they were published in with an almost poetic commentary.

Closes 12 June 2022

Review

Guardian


 


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