The Photographers’ Gallery would have to be the perfect Saturday afternoon gallery. Right in the middle of Soho/Covent Garden just a few metres from the tube it’s completely free, not too big, not too small, no queues, easy to make a quick escape from, and to top it off has a cafe and interesting bookshop on the premises. It’s also the perfect place to stage the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize as it has four separate exhibition rooms, in two buildings.
Founded in 1996, the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize is worth £30,000 and is awarded annually to an international photographer who is judged to have made the greatest contribution to photography over the previous year. The 2008 exhibition shows the work of the four finalists, John Davies, Jacob Holdt, Fazal Sheikh and Esko Männikkö, who is the overall winner. And it’s plain to see why the judges favoured these artists: each one of them does what any good photographer should – interprets in his own way what is hard to capture, easy to ignore, impermanent, and pushed to the outer.
Each photographer has a completely different approach, so The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize exhibition is like seeing four compact exhibitions in one.
Finnish born photographer Esko Männikkö documents the lives of those who inhabit the periphery. His background as a hunter is reflected in the subject matter of some of his colourful (literally) works, which he has chosen to set in big found wooden frames. Kitsch interiors, quirky portraits or people and animals and magnificent landscapes invite you into faraway worlds where the unusual seems strikingly normal. And yet there’s still a cut-off, end-of-the-road feeling to most of the subjects and scenes he captures.
The work of the youngest photographer represented, American born Fazal Sheikh, couldn’t be more different. Black and white portraits of Indian women, with small essays printed on the walls next to them. The beauty of the women and the photos themselves contrasts dramatically with the stories of displacement, cruelty and disadvantage detailed in the text.
Danish born Jacob Holdlt’s work takes us on a chilling and depressing slide show through America in the early 1970s. Drugs, prostitution, grinding poverty, and larger than life characters are projected onto the wall accompanied by a brochure explaining who they are, and where the photographer met them.
The UK’s representative is John Davies, and his stunning panoramic landscapes of a changing way of life in 1980s and 90s Britain. Industrial towns and council estates take on a certain cold beauty photographed from above in black and white.
It’s hard to imagine an exhibition that gives a better representation of four different approaches to the art of photography.
The Photographers’ Gallery recently unveiled plans for a £15.5 million new home in the heart of Soho, to be completed by 2011. The new Gallery will have more exhibition space and state of the art technology, and will be the first major UK commission for architects, O’Donnell + Tuomey.
Here’s hoping it still retains its intimate, accessible feel, and continues to be the perfect gallery for a Saturday afternoon.
The exhibition finished on 6 April 2008. Images are available at the gallery’s website. The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2008 exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, edited by Stefanie Braun. The catalogue includes a short story by Riikka Ala-Harja inspired by Esko Männikkö’s work, a fictional response to John Davies’ photographs by Sarah Hall and essays by Dr Caroline Blinder and Mary Warner Marien contextualising the work of Jacob Holdt and Fazal Sheikh. The catalogue is available from the Gallery Bookshop at 8 Great Newport Street at the special exhibition price of £16.99.
