I can’t say I was surprised to hear that this year’s prize was awarded to Sophie Ristelhueber, who as I mentioned when I wrote rather briefly about this year’s four finalists said of herself “Nowadays I am not even a photographer because I am a conceptual artist.” And she is right, she isn’t a photographer and was in the wrong competition in the wrong gallery.
Frankly it wasn’t a good year for the gallery, with none of the four finalists standing out, and even by Photographers’ Gallery standards it was an extremely boring show. As usual the best work was on display in the print room, though even there it didn’t seem quite up to the usual standard.
It isn’t a situation I take any satisfaction in, rather one of considerable frustration because I know there is a lot of great photography out there. At least half a dozen photographers in the current show of Indian photography at the Whitechapel and another dozen whose work I’ve seen at other shows in London in the past year whose work I’ve found in some way exciting, and far more whose work I’ve come across on the web who have had shows in other cities across Europe.
What did interest me today was to read a Guardian feature, Has the Deutsche Börse turned into a conceptual art prize? by Sean O’Hagan which makes much the same kind of criticisms against the prize that I’ve made over the years, that the prize simply fails to reflect the “vitality, range or depth of contemporary photography from around the globe” and calling for “less theory and process and more exciting pictures.”
I wrote that the prize should have gone to the man who produced the scrapbooks that formed a part of Donovan Wylie‘s exhibition. Joanna Pitman in the Times suggested it should go to ‘Pete’ for his anti-cuisine meals photographed in loving close-up by Anna Fox.
This prize has simply become a piece of mutual curatorial back-scratching, with very little relevance to what is actually happening in photography – and rather a backwater so far as art more generally is concerned.
I’ve been a member of the Photographers’ Gallery for over 30 years, but now it has become something I’m almost ashamed to admit to other photographers and it isn’t just this prize that makes me feel that, but the whole programme there over recent years. As I’ve written before, it seems always to be apologising for photography rather than celebrating it. It really is time for the gallery either to start supporting photography or consider a change of name – and for the Art Council to rethink how it can support photography in Britain. There isn’t much point in funding a flagship if it is flying the wrong flag.