As part of the RAY 2018 photo triennal, the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst shows at MMK 3 works of the four artists shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2018: Mathieu Asselin, Rafal Milach, Batia Suter and Luke Willis Thompson.
Typically wide-ranging in style and approach, all of this year’s shortlisted projects nevertheless reflect a concern with the production and manipulation of knowledge and systems of representation through visual formats. The projects encompass a searing photographic interrogation of global biotech giant, Monsanto (Asselin); an exploration of the seemingly innocent tactics of government control and propaganda (Milach); an encyclopaedic collection of visual taxonomies that expose the shifting and relative meanings of printed images depending on their context (Suter); and a deeply affecting filmic study of grief that reflects the personal cost of visual representation and media exploitation (Willis Thompson).
2018 marks the twenty-first year of the Prize and reaffirms its position as a barometer of talent, excellence and innovation. The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize is an annual award which has been established in 1997 by The Photographers’ Gallery, London and is awarded together with the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation. The £30,000 prize rewards a living photographer, of any nationality, for a specific body of work in an exhibition or publication format in Europe, which is felt to have significantly contributed to the medium of photography in the previous year.