Visiting the Deutsche Borse Photography Prize 2014

One of my favourite exhibition  events is the Deutsche Borse Exhibition, not least because it always makes me stand infront of the winner and ask myself 'why?'  as I never seem to agree with the judges decision.

The Deutsche Borse Photography Prize 2014 is awarded to a living photographer for a specific body of work in a publication or exhibition format which is judged to have 'significantly contributed' to photography in Europe between
1 October 2012 and 30 September 2013.

Four artists were shortlisted; Alberto Garcia-Alix, Jochen Lempert, Richard Mosse and Lorna Simpson. And the winner? Richard Mosse for his exhibition 'The Enclave' - a multimedia installation at the Irish Pavilion at last year's Venice Biennale.

His photographs portraying  war-scarred landscapes in eastern Congo are eyecatching,intriguing and unsettling. They have an almost psychedelic appearance derived from a pink hue - he used out of date military infra-red film which used to be used to identify camouflaged targets. Reading Mark Brown's article in the Guardian at
http://goo.gl/NR4fjo   it seems the colours were all about attracting people and keeping their attention so that they watched all the films in the exhibition. Obviously the Deutsche Borse prize  exhibition can only show a small part of the prize winning body of work but what I did see may me wonder whether what Mosse's audience drew from this work. For me the colours were 'magical' but drew my eye away from the subject matter - more natural colours or even black and white would have worked better for me, allowing a greater opportunity to consider the complexity of war without the distraction of his colour scheme.

So what about the other contenders? The shortlisted works  of Alberto Garcia-Aliz, Jochen Lempert and Lorna Simpson  were all in black and white. 

Lempert has used photography to study humans and the natural world since the 1990s; his work ranges from everyday views to abstracts. I liked what I saw but it did

engage me emotionally..

In a series called 1957-2009 American Lorna Simpson took images from a late 1950s photo album and re created them featuring herself.It is difficult to work out which images are the originals and which the re-enacted ones.Is this what she intended as the outcome or rather emphasising themes such as gender, identity through the contrasting versions? Hard to say, other than it raises the question of what is actually real here.

Lastly, Alberto Garcia-Alix's publication 'Autorretrato/ Selfportrait' - black and white self portraits offering insight into his life over four decades. Standing in front of images reflecting a junkie's life,I could see the intended 'drama' of the subject matter clearly, though again I didn't feel engaged.

So this year's Deutsche Borse photography prize did not disappoint as yet again I came away wondering how you can judge such a diverse range of work..and again not entirely agreeing with the outcome - though this time I could not choose a winner myself.