The annual Deutsche Börse
Photography Prize is awarded to a living photographer, of any nationality, for
a specific body of published or exhibited work “that has significantly
contributed to photography in Europe” during the previous year. The award has
many similarities with Britain’s Turner prize: four photographers are
short-listed early in the year, following which their work is exhibited (in
this event at The Photographer’s Gallery) before the winner of the impressive
(£30,000 for the Deutsche Börse) prize is announced later in the year.
Furthermore, the selected candidates are usually little known or unheard of and
often have (at best) tenuous links with mainstream photography and photographic
genres, favouring a conceptual and/or experimental approach to their work.
Indeed, artists who do not take photographs but merely use those of others
(John Stezaker being a prime example) have been short-listed in the past.
This year’s selection of artists
did not disappoint for quirkiness, although it has to be said in their defence
that all those selected are, to a greater or lesser extent, photographers.
Furthermore, the work exhibited was not, in a couple of cases, fully
representative of the body of work that was judged by the selection panel. What
follows is a brief overview of the work of each of the four artists that was
exhibited at the gallery, together with my thoughts about their work.
Lorna Simpson
Lorna Simpson is a black American
artist, whose work links photography, text, video installations and archival
material. She was nominated for her Paris exhibition: “Lorna Simpson
(Retrospective)”. The work on display took the form of a wall-mounted matrix of
small photographic prints, all apparently being 1950s archival images. Most of
the prints featured an attractive black American woman posing for the camera in
a variety of postures. Perhaps the photographs were taken as promotional
material or for advertising. On the face of it there seems to be nothing
remarkable or outstanding about any of the prints although their positioning on
the wall of the gallery, packed closely together, does convey a period
atmosphere of 1950s America and poses questions about gender, race and
exploitation and how our attitudes may have changed in the intervening period.
It is only when we read about the exhibit that we realise that Simpson acquired
many of the photos as a purchase on eBay and that these are promotional
pictures of a young black woman in 1950s de-segregated California. Simpson then
posed herself for further “re-enacted” photographs which were produced in such
a way as to make it very difficult to distinguish the difference between the
originals and those of Simpson herself. These photographs were then printed and
mixed in with the “originals” in the matrix.
Whilst Simpson succeeds in producing
modern day (2009) prints that cannot be readily distinguished (even,
apparently, by her own family) from the originals I struggled to find a deeper
meaning here. Unlike Cindy Sherman’s classic series of “film stills” all the
photographs seem to refer to the same story and, because I too was unable to
distinguish between the originals and the re-constructed prints, I could not
see how adding Simpson’s self-portraits to the matrix added any depth to the
original story and the themes contained therein.
Richard Mosse
Irish artist Richard Mosse is
nominated for his exhibition “The Enclave”, which featured in the Irish
pavilion at the 2013 Venice biennale. His work is perhaps better known than
those of the other artists featured here and consists of a series of large
prints, taken in the Democratic Republic of Congo using discontinued military
16mm infra-red film. The effect of the film, after development, is to show up
the vegetation of the area in a series of rich red and magenta colours (see
Image 1), whilst rivers and lakes appear in bright and disconcerting cyan hues.
This fairy tale (or nightmare?) setting is populated by men carrying guns,
corpses and boy soldiers going about their business in a war zone that has,
directly or indirectly, claimed the lives of over five million people since
1998.
Mosse’s surreal photographs
certainly draw our attention to a continuing, yet almost forgotten human
tragedy. Their shocking hues paint a nightmarish picture, where the fighters
and corpses appear relatively normal in comparison with their psychedelic
surroundings. Mosse has found a new way of depicting the horrors of war, but
does it shock or change our views? In other words, is it effective and, if so,
does it tell us more than, say, a Don McCullin black and white print of a child
soldier would? Whilst I must express personal distaste for Mosse’s prints
because of the false colours and the feeling that they ruin what might
otherwise have been, in some cases, beautiful landscapes or scenes that shock
because of their association with war, I have to admit that the images are both
distinctive and affecting: they live on in the memory.
Jochen Lempert
German photographer Jochen
Lempert is nominated for his 2013 eponymous exhibition in Hamburg. His work on
display at the Photographers’ gallery consisted of a cornucopia of black and
white prints of diverse subjects ranging from abstracts to snapshots of birds
on local ponds. Whilst some of his prints were clearly linked others appeared
to have been randomly selected and incorporated into an untidy collection that
appeared to have been carelessly mounted or stuck in place for the exhibition.
I have to confess that I neither
understood nor cared for Lempert’s work. Most of the individual photographs
lacked any kind of photographic quality: indeed, some could have been taken by
a child out for a walk in the local park with their first camera. I have grown
used to this feeling when looking at the work of practitioners of photographic
art but usually there is an underlying theme: a story that is greater than the
sum of its parts. Here I saw nothing: yes, there were links (occasionally
humorous) between small series of images but overall this display came across
to me as an unedifying mess (and therefore, no doubt, a sure-fire winner of the
prize).
Alberto Garcia-Alix
Spanish photographer Garcia-Alix
is nominated for his publication “Self-portrait” [La Fabrica Editorial (2013)].
The book features self-portraits taken over 40 years, from the final years of
Franco’s dictatorship to the present day. It is no surprise that these black
and white portraits are both the most conventional in the exhibition and, for
me, easily the most impressive. There is a photographic quality here that far
surpasses anything seen elsewhere in the gallery, whilst taken as a whole the
images tell the intimate story of an unconventional, drug-addled life, of the
changes in Spanish society during the past 40 years and of the very human
process of ageing. From the brashness of youth to the self-reflection of later
years these images do not ask us to like or even empathise with our subject,
but simply to take him (literally) at face value, warts and all.
As a conventional photographer
who strives for quality and admires this quality in the work of others I would
have Garcia-Alix streets ahead as my nominee for the prize, when it is
announced in three days’ time.
Final Thoughts
The selection jury for the
Deutsche Börse prize are known to favour conceptual experimentation over the
more traditional photographic virtues, so it is not surprising to see a general
lack of technical expertise and quality within the work of the four candidates.
The one exception is Alberto Garcia-Alix, whose work I enjoyed. However, as I
write this review three days before the winner is announced I will be very
surprised to see him claiming the prize [additional note: the prize was won
by Richard Mosse].
Learning Points,
Future Work and References:
The work of Garcia-Alix, taken as
a whole, produces an interesting story of personal ageing and changes in
Spanish society, as documented through a series of self-portraits. Using the
genres of portrait and documentary it represents an outstanding example of a
“story board” of the type that I will be trying to produce, over a much shorter
time period, for my major project.
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