The London-based artists Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin have become the first duo to win the Deutsche Börse photography prize. They were presented with the £30,000 award by the film director Mike Figgis at a ceremony this evening at the Photographers’ Gallery in London, which sponsors the prize.
The award is for a “significant contribution to the medium of photography either through an exhibition or publication in Europe” throughout the previous year. Broomberg and Chanarin were praised for their book War Primer 2, originally published in a small edition by Mack Books, which reworks Bertolt Brecht‘s original War Primer publication from 1955 using internet screengrabs and mobile phone snaps to comment on the role of photography in the so-called “war on terror”.
Link to video: Deutsche Börse photography prize 2013
The shortlist also included Cristina de Middel, whose first book, The Afronauts, has become a self-publishing phenomenon; Mishka Henner, who uses images of sex workers culled from Google Street View; and the British documentary photographer Chris Killip for his retrospective series What Happened – Great Britain 1970-1990. Brett Rogers, non-voting chair of the jury and director of the Photographers’ Gallery, said: “The jury awarded the prize to Broomberg and Chanarin for their bold and powerful reimagining of Brecht’s War Primer. [It] applauded the way in which the project pushed the boundaries of the medium, exploring the complex relationship between image and text while drawing on elements from both the past history of photography and the present image economy.”
To anyone familiar with the recent history of the Deutsche Börse prize, the result is unsurprising. Indeed, one might wonder why Chris Killip was included on the shortlist at all given that a straightforward documentary photographer, even one as esteemed as Killip, is so unlikely to ever take the award again.
For Broomberg and Chanarin, the accolade comes just as they publish their most controversial work to date, Holy Bible, in which found images from the Archive of Modern Conflict are provocatively overlaid on pages of Christian scripture. Given that many of the juxtapositions of biblical text and photographs are extreme – images of death, sex, mutilation, terrorism and deformity are included – the duo may also find themselves making headlines for all the wrong reasons. Whatever you think of their work, they are certainly pushing the boundaries – and not just of photography.
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Deutsche Börse photography prize 2013 won by Broomberg and Chanarin
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