Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2012

Pieter Hugo, Rinko Kawauchi, John Stezaker, Christopher Williams

The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, worth £30,000, is awarded annually at The Photographers’ Gallery in London to a living photographer of any nationality who has made an outstanding contribution, by an exhibition or a publication, to photography in Europe in the past year. This year’s finalists, Pieter Hugo (b. 1976, South Africa), Rinko Kawauchi (b. 1972, Japan), John Stezaker (b. 1949, UK) and Christopher Williams (b. 1956, USA) represent the broad artistic spectrum of contemporary photography. In his publication Permanent Error, Pieter Hugo documents the unsettling impact of electronic waste in Ghana. In Illuminance, Rinko Kawauchi brings her highly personal sensitivity to bear on issues of life, death and day-to-day routine. The collages that John Stezaker exhibited in London rigorously explore the subversive force of the found image. Finally, in his exhibition Kapitalistischer Realismus (Capitalist Realism), Christopher Williams uses the language of commercial photography to question the aesthetic conventions that influence our perception of reality.