Wylie Fox, breaking cover
BJP can exclusively reveal the shortlist for the 2010 Deutsche Borse Photography Prize, Europe's premier contest celebrating art photography. Olivier Laurent reports
Clockwise from top left: Deconstruction of the Maze prison, Northern Ireland, 2009 © Donovan Wylie/ Magnum Photos; Fait (n°31), 1992 © Sophie Ristelhueber/adagp; Image from Analogue, 1998-2009 © Zoe Leonard, courtesy the artist and Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne; Country Girls 1999 from the series Country Girls 1996 – 2001 © Anna Fox and Alison Goldfrapp
Two British photographers, Anna Fox and Donovan Wylie, are among the shortlist for this year's Deutsche Borse Photography Prize, sharing the stage of Europe's most prestigious art photography contest with Sophie Ristelhueber and Zoe Leonard.
The competition rewards a photographer who has made the most significant contribution, in the form of an exhibition or publication, to the medium of photography in Europe in the previous year. The four shortlisted works will go on show at The Photographers' Gallery next year before the £30,000 winner is announced on 17 March.
Fox is recognised for her exhibition Cockroach Diaries & Other Stories at the Ffotogallery in Cardiff earlier this year. The main 'story' was inspired by an infestation at Fox's home in North London. In Country Girls, which was also included in her first ever major retrospective, the photographer collaborated with singer Alison Goldfrapp to portray the experiences of growing up as a young woman in rural southern England. The exhibition also includes The Village, 'a deeply satirical narrative that depicts family weddings, fetes and women's domestic lives in rural West Sussex,' says the Ffotogallery.
'Anna Fox looks at the theme of home, rendering it in surreal ways,' says Stefanie Braun, curator of the prize. 'She is part of the second wave of colourists like Paul Graham and Martin Parr, but who is often overlooked.'
Wylie is nominated for his exhibition Maze 2007/8 at Belfast Exposed, which is the continuation of a project he started in 2002. At that time, Wylie spent 100 days photographing inside the Maze prison - the detention facility that became synonymous with the Northern Irish conflict. Five years later, Wylie was the only photographer to be granted unlimited access to the prison to document its demolition.
'Wylie went back to the prison to show the impact the architecture had on its detainees, the trail these people have left, as well as the claustrophobic feeling people had there,' says Braun.
Leonard, a US photographer, is shortlisted for her eponymous retrospective exhibition at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich. 'She has worked since 1981 and is interested in the photograph as a document,' says Braun. 'She integrates family snapshots and aerial photography into her work. In Analogue, she photographed shop windows and other urban landmarks that are slowly disappearing.' The work, centred on the Lower East Side and Brooklyn neighbourhoods in New York, captures the local changes caused by globalisation and urban redevelopment.
French photographer Sophie Ristelhueber is nominated for her retrospective held early this year at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. For the past 20 years Ristelhueber has been challenging the rules of war photography, preferring to look at war ruins and the impact left by man on territory.
'Her bodies of work are not autonomous,' says Braun. 'She's been investigating the notion of territory, dealing with how the Earth has been scorched by war.' In portraying the 1991 Gulf War, Ristelhueber travelled to Kuwait six months after the end of the Desert Storm operation, photographing tracks in the sand and abandoned tanks, vehicles and bunkers.
'The Deutsche Borse Photography Prize is considered the most prestigious art photography contest in the world,' says Brett Rogers, director of The Photographers' Gallery and non-voting chair of the jury. 'As such, all of the nominees are worthy winners, having been selected with this fact in mind.'
She adds: 'For us, it's another opportunity to put photography on the map in the UK. These are extremely important subjects, and most people won't have heard of these photographers before. Zoe Leonard, for example, has never been shown in the UK before.'
The four shortlisted exhibitions will be on show at The Photographers' Gallery from 12 February 2010 for two months. The winner will be announced on 17 March.
For more details, visit www.photonet.org.uk.
