Deutsche Börse presents a special exhibition of the four finalists of the 2008 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2008 at its headquarters in Frankfurt. The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize is an annual, international award allocated to a contemporary photographer who has made a significant contribution (exhibition or publication) to photography in Europe in the previous year. The prize was originally set up in 1996 by The Photographers' Gallery in London to promote the best of contemporary photography. As one of the most prestigious prizes in the world of photography, it showcases new talents and highlights the best of international photography.
The selection of this year's finalists focuses on artists dealing with important social and political themes in their photographic work. In works ranging from documentary photographs of post-industrial landscapes, to investigative photojournalistic works all the way to politically engaged photography, the four finalists shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2008 - John Davies (UK), Jacob Holdt (Denmark), Esko Männikkö (Finland) and Fazal Sheikh (USA) - impress the viewer with a broad spectrum of motifs and styles. While John Davies investigates the radical transformation of cultural landscapes in Great Britain in the wake of industrial decline and the resulting social, political, and environmental changes, Jacob Holdt's colour photos tell a very moving story of human intimacy, poverty, alienation, violence, and resistance in the USA during the 1970s. Esko Männikkö presents a world, in carefully selected wooden frames, in which he treats animals, objects, and people with equal respect and childlike wonder. In his calm close-ups, Fazal Sheikh traces the effects of the continuing prejudice against women in present-day Indian society. Once again, this year's Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, as one of the most important awards for contemporary photography, showcases a broad spectrum of motifs and styles. In March 2008, Esko Männikkö received the €45,000 award for his retrospective "Cocktails 1990-2007" at Millesgarden in Stockholm, Sweden.
The four finalists of 2008 are:
John Davies (b. 1949, UK), Jacob Holdt (b. 1947, Denmark), Esko Männikkö (b. 1959, Finland), Fazal Sheikh (b. 1965, USA)
John Davies
John Davies has been nominated for "The British Landscape" at the National Media Museum, Bradford, UK (13 October 2006 - 4 February 2007). His panoramic black-and-white photographs, taken between 1979 and 2005, document the changing post-industrial British landscape. Coolly detached and combining the monumental with the banal, these works are an ongoing and in-depth study of the relationship between our social, economic and industrial history.
Jacob Holdt
Jacob Holdt has been nominated for his publication "Jacob Holdt, United States 1970-1975", published by Steidl, Germany (2007). In the early 1970s, Holdt spent five years hitchhiking across the US, living with and documenting the lives of the people he met - from the poorest Southern sharecroppers to some of America's wealthiest families. Part travelogue, part political essay his images expose social and racial injustice in Nixon's America and present a powerful tale of human intimacy, poverty, alienation and protest.
Esko Männikkö
Esko Männikkö has been nominated for his retrospective "Cocktails 1990-2007" at Millesgarden, Stockholm, Sweden (1 September - 4 November 2007). A portraitist of isolation, Männikkö documents with great humour, warmth and integrity the lives of those who inhabit the periphery. "Cocktails" featured a selection of portraits, still life and landscape photographs from series such as "Finnish Series", "Organized Freedom" and "Harmony Sisters". Shown in assorted wooden frames, found and weathered by time, his images acquire a timeless, almost painterly quality.
Fazal Sheikh
Fazal Sheikh has been nominated for his publication "Ladli", published by Steidl, Germany (2007). Sheikh is an artist-activist who uses photography to create portraits of different communities around the world. His latest project "Ladli" examines the effects of enduring prejudice against women in contemporary Indian society and highlights - through his powerful black-and-white portraits and the accompanying individual testimonies - the extent to which some women in India are still victims of ancient religious and cultural codes.
Deutsche Borse Photography Prize 2008
Until 17 October
Deutsche Börse Group
Neue Börsenstr. 1
60487 Frankfurt (Main)
Germany
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