Boundary-pushing methodologies come to the fore in the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2023, now on show at The Photographers’ Gallery, London, where the award’s four nominees are exploring contemporary themes with dynamic approaches.
Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2023 nominees
Frida Orupabo
Frida Orupabo, A lil help, 2021
(Image credit: Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin, Stockholm, Mexico City)
Frida Orupabo works with multi-layered collages and Instagram posts using material circulated online to ask questions on race, sexuality and identity, as the Norwegian Nigerian artist and sociologist creates archival reworks that reject one-dimensional depictions of Black lives. Nominated for her exhibition ‘I have seen a million pictures of my face and still I have no idea’, originally shown at Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland, Orupado explains: ‘My work is a way of sorting things, sorting emotions and thoughts I have. It’s a way of speaking…’
Arthur Jafa
Arthur Jafa, Bloods II, 2020
(Image credit: Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery Arthur Jafa)
This thread of creating a voice through a reworking of existing material continues in Arthur Jafa’s ‘Live Evil’, nominated for its showing at LUMA, Arles, France which consisted of visceral films, installations and disquieting photographs. While The Photographer’s Gallery has a capsule of the original large-scale curation on show, Jafa’s critical questioning still rings out loudly ‘How can visual media – such as objects, static and moving images – transmit the equivalent power, beauty and alienation embedded within forms of Black music in US culture?’
Bieke Depoorter
Bieke Depoorter, Michael at home, Portland, Oregon, USA, May 2015
(Image credit: Bieke Depoorter/Magnum Photos. Courtesy the artist)
Questioning of a different nature is explored in Bieke Depoorter’s series, ‘A Chance Encounter’, previously shown at C/O Berlin, as the magnum artist tests the limits and ethics of creative friendships, performance and authorship through collaborative projects with her subjects Michael and Agata. Both relationships have severed in different ways, Michaels with a mysterious disappearance, while Agata withdraws her collaborative consent. Across both contexts, Depoorter shows radical transparency of the process. ‘More and more I realise that unconsciously how you are brought up, the things that happen in your childhood, for example, are shaping your creativity. I am trying to find ways to listen to that and to be guided by that.’
Samuel Fosso
Samuel Fosso, Self-Portrait (Tommie Smith) from the series African Spirits, 2008
(Image credit: Courtesy of the artist and JM Patras, Paris)
Identity is drawn into question from a different perspective in Samuel Fosso’s self-portraits, nominated for his exhibition at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, France. For the Cameroonian artist, who has been described as a ‘man of a thousand faces’, his series ‘African Spirits’ is a disruptive re-staging of authoritative portraits from the history of Black resistance. Fosso explains his inspiration is ‘everything I have experienced in my life, such as the Biafra war when I was still a child, or the assassination of my friend and neighbour Tala in 1999. But also the story of slavery and all those who freed me, the Senegalese Tirailleurs during the two world wars, the economic weight of China in Africa… What I am trying to express is History. I use my thoughts and my body to tell stories: it is nothing more than that.’
The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2023 exhibition will be on view at the Photographers’ Gallery, London, until 11 Jun 2023, with the winner announced on 11 May. deutscheboersephotographyfoundation.org (opens in new tab); thephotographersgallery.org.uk (opens in new tab)
