Sophie Calle, Dana Lixenberg, Awoiska van der Molen, and Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs are the shortlisted artists for the 2017 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation prize.
The prize goes to a photographer of any nationality for their significant contribution to the medium of photography, either through an exhibition or publication in Europe. Past winners include Paul Graham, Juergen Teller and Rineke Dijkstra.
All of this time’s nominated artists “investigate questions of truth and fiction, doubt and certainty, what constitutes the real and ideal and the relationship between the observer and the observed,” according to the foundation.
Calle has been nominated for her publication My All (Actes Sud, 2016), in which the French photographer experiments with the medium of the postcard set. “This set of postcards functions as a beautiful portfolio of Calle’s work, as well as a new investigation of it, in an appropriately nomadic format.”
Lixenberg has been nominated for her publication Imperial Courts (Roma, 2015). After first visiting south Los Angeles for a magazine story on the riots that erupted following the Rodney King trial in 1992, the Dutch artist has returned numerous times and gradually created a collaborative portrait of the changing face of this community. According to the nomination “Imperial Courts constitutes a complex and evocative record of the passage of time in an underserved community”.
Van der Molen, who is also Dutch, has been nominated for her exhibition, Blanco, at Foam Fotografie Museum in Amsterdam, which ran between January and April. She creates black and white, abstracted images that revitalise the genre of landscape photography: “Her work questions how natural and manmade environments are commonly represented and interacted with.”
Onorato and Krebs, both Swiss, are nominated for their exhibition EURASIA at Fotomuseum Winterthur, which ran from October 2015 until March. It playfully draws on the iconography of the road trip constructing experiences drawn from memory and imagination. “Using a mix of analogue media and techniques including 16mm films, large-format plate cameras and installation-based interventions, Onorato and Krebs compose a narrative that is as much fiction as documentation.”
The 2016 award was won by Trevor Paglen, the US multidisciplinary artist known for his work tackling mass surveillance.
Works by this year’s shortlisted photographers will be on display at the Photographers’ Gallery in London from 3 March until 11 June next year and then the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt from 29 June until 17 September.
The winner will be announced at an award ceremony during the London exhibition.
The jury comprises Susan Bright, curator; Pieter Hugo, artist; Karolina Lewandowska, curator of photography at Centre Pompidou Paris; Anne-Marie Beckmann, director, Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation; and Clare Grafik, head of exhibitions at the Photographers’ Gallery (non-voting chair).
