Thursday, November 29, 2012

Deutsche Borse Announces Shortlist for 2013 Photography Prize

© Mishka Henner

The four finalists for the 2013 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, which comes with a 30,000 pound (about $48,000 US) award, have been announced. They are: Mishka Henner, Cristina de Middel, Chris Killip and the duo of Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin. The prize honors a contemporary photographer who has made a significant contribution to the medium of photography through an exhibition or publication. The shortlisted photographers will be exhibited in April at The Photographers Gallery in London.

This year the prize stirred controversy when it was awarded to John Stezaker, a veteran collage artist who does not take his own photos. This year’s finalists also includes artists who use photographs they don’t actually shoot with a camera.

Mishka Henner of the UK is nominated for his exhibition No Man’s Land at Fotografia Festival Internazionale di Roma, Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome, Italy. Henner uses Google Street View to show areas, usually on the edges of cities, where men hire sex workers, according to online forums.

The duo of Adam Broomberg (a South African-born photographer) and Oliver Chanarin (who is English) were nominated for War Primer 2 (published by Mack). The book is an update of Bertolt Brecht’s 1955 War Primer, which combined press images and newspaper clippings from World War II with his own poems. In War Primer 2, Broomberg and Chanarin examine America’s War on Terror through images found on the internet.

Cristina De Middel of Spain is nominated for her self-published 2011 book The Afronauts, which examines, through constructed images, the national space program launchedin 1964 by the newly independent Zambia. In the statement that accompanied images from the book, honored in the PDN Photo Annual 2012, she wrote,

View the Original article