Sophie Calle, Dana Lixenberg, Awoiska van der Molen, and Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs are the shortlisted artists for the 2017 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation prize.
The prize goes to a photographer of any nationality for their significant contribution to the medium of photography, either through an exhibition or publication in Europe. Past winners include Paul Graham, Juergen Teller and Rineke Dijkstra.
All of this time’s nominated artists “investigate questions of truth and fiction, doubt and certainty, what constitutes the real and ideal and the relationship between the observer and the observed,” according to the foundation’s website.
The winner will be announced at a special award ceremony during the exhibition run at The Photographers' Gallery in London.
Awoiska van der Molen (b. 1972, The Netherlands) has been nominated for her exhibition Blanco at Foam Fotografie Museum, Amsterdam (22 Jan - 3 Apr 2016). Van der Molen creates black and white, abstracted images that revitalise the genre of landscape photography. Spending long periods of time in solitude and silence in foreign landscapes, from Japan to Norway to Crete, she explores the identity of the place, allowing it to impress upon her its specific emotional and physical qualities and her personal experience within it. With this intuitive approach van der Molen aims to find a pure form of representing her surroundings, by focusing on the essential elements in and around her. Her work questions how natural and manmade environments are commonly represented and interacted with.
The jury:
Susan Bright, Curator; Pieter Hugo, Artist; Karolina Lewandowska, Curator of Photography at Centre Pompidou Paris; Anne-Marie Beckmann, Director, Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation and Clare Grafik, Head of Exhibitions, The Photographers’ Gallery as the non-voting chair
