Deutsche Börse Photography Prize
This year’s shortlist for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize shows a welcome shift of emphasis. Whereas 2007′s nominees had rather intimidating, introspective themes, this year each of the artists has flung his net outwards with a keen, almost evangelical fervour, to create social observations which make full use of photography’s talent for conferring beauty on the ordinary. Walking around this exhibition, you begin to feel optimistic that these works herald new ambitions for the medium.
None of them requires complicated interpretation. The work of Esko Männikkö shows the windswept silence of the Nordic peripheries in warming, folksy style. His images of the terrain, its animals and isolated populace are submerged in a soft, muted light which lends their mundane objects – dented saucepans hanging from nails on the wall, fish nets, alarm clocks – an ethereal nuance.
Each is presented in Männikkö’s trademark handmade wooden frame, without glass and printed on a glossy surface with the sheen of oil paint.
This close-up of the head of a horse with a black-and-white coat is by the Finnish photographer Esko Männikkö. It is all eye, texture, pattern and bold expression, and shown almost as a still life. ‘I see animals as personalities, as characters,’ he says. ‘You have to know the look you are after before you set out to take the photographs.’
Eyes are central to many of his animal pictures, as a means of conveying personality, making contact with them through a shared glance, and for the visual impact of the photograph.
John Davies has been photographing the raw industrial wilderness and suburban sprawl of the Midlands and northern England since 1981. His large-format studies capture the dense layers of history in Britain’s landscape and architecture, and carry enough detail to keep you absorbed for hours.
A characteristic shot is Bowling Greens, Stockport, 1988. Davies sets great store by the captions that accompany his photography. This one reads, in part, ‘Heaton Norris Park, opened in 1875, was financed by public subscription and by a gift from Lord Egerton. As with many other public parks established in Victorian Britain, its creation was in response to the poor living conditions of industrial workers.
Jacob Holdt’s United States 1970-1975 is equally strong fare, the result of an extended road-trip through Nixon-era America. His beautifully executed images fluctuate between pitilessly dark representations of poverty and the “filthy rich” of Palm Beach and South Carolina. He has an uncanny ability to capture alienation and restlessness with telling touches. Paper peels from slum walls; chairs spill out foamy innards.
Rekha was found by Sheikh in a shelter in Haryana.
Not quite so restrained in its political invective is the work of Fazal Sheikh. His project, Ladli, examines the dark consequences of cultural and religious codes in contemporary India. Among a number of beautiful black-and-white portraits are grisly images showing women who have been killed or disfigured by members of their families.
Sonali was found wandering in a village near Karnal. She had been raped. Her parents deny that she is their daughter.
Sheikh’s talent is for blending such horrors with close-ups that capture the inner soul of the sitter: dark, reflective, questioning eyes, tersely entwined hands, heads turned away from the camera to feature napes of necks and coiled hair that articulate volumes of distrust and disappointment.
Via telegraph.co.uk
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