Deutsche Bourse Photography Prize 2012

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This is my second trip to the new Photographer's Gallery in Soho. This time to see the shortlisted work for the Deutsche Bourse Photography Prize 2012. This is a bit like the Turner Prize (at least in the judging). Somehow a shortlist of four candidates has been chosen and the winner will be selected from among these four by a panel of experts sometime in September.

The four candidates are Pieter Hugo, Rinko Kawauchi, John Stezaker and Christopher Williams.

For me, the standout candidate is Rinko Kawauchi whose work is mainly abstract. She captures light in a way that is exceptional among photographers.

Pieter Hugo and Christopher Williams are a little more conventional. Hugo presents journalistic-style images of life for people who make a living on a rubbish tip in Accra, Ghana while Williams takes conceptual photographs of laboratory equipment. Technically, these pictures are faultless. One is curious about how much post-processing is done by the camera and the computer. But the pictures are exceptional. Precisely how they are created is something I feel I need to know.

The most unusual of the photo-sets is that presented by John Stezaker. He uses found photos of hollywood stars. He cuts them (physically!) and reassembles them in artistic fashion to combine the left half of one face with the right of another. It's very effective. Is it photography? It's certainly art. It'll be interesting to discuss if he wins.

[added later: Stezaker did in fact win, a little to the consternation of some comentators (e.g. Fisun Guner at theArtsDesk.com http://www.theartsdesk.com/visual-arts/opinion-who-needs-top-photography-prize-which-champions-non-photographers) who thought, like me, that this was Art rather than Photography]