Deutsche Borse Photography Prize, Photographers’ Gallery - exhibition review: beauty meets gritty reality

The artists shortlisted for this annual prize reflect the broad spectrum of ideas and visual languages present in photography today, says Sue Steward
Deutsche Borse: Ponte City from Yeoville Ridge by Mikhael Subotzky & Patrick Waterhouse (courtesy Goodman Gallery)
Sue Steward28 April 2015

The six international artists shortlisted for this annual prize reflect the broad spectrum of ideas and visual languages present in photography today.

Zanele Muholi, a “visual activist” from South Africa, presents a wall of black-and-white portraits of the country’s LGBT community, expressing courage in the face of attacks on transsexuals, lesbians and gays. Her photographs exude androgynous beauty while the accompanying films explore threats and rape — but courage remains.

In Johannesburg, the collaborative work of Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse raises issues about negative social change. They show a towering lightbox of slides depicting middle-class life inside Ponte City, a high-rise apartment building that has now been abandoned.

Nikolai Bakharev’s intimate black-and-white scenes show Russian bathers and picnickers in the Eighties and Nineties flouting the Soviet Union’s past rules about nudity and intimacy. Here we see tender images of mothers suckling babies, while children and lovers of all ages appear in bundles of entwined flesh.

Viviane Sassen’s work is constantly evolving. The Dutch photographer still displays a layering of ideas and maintains her identifiably rich colours, sharp shadows, reflections, backdrops of orangey Namibian sands and sculptural forms of bodies and objects sharing shadows. But in her recent work a wall of abstract images have Constructivist references and a bold graphic quality. This year’s strong shortlist almost demands a coalition but the judges will announce an overall winner on May 28.

Until June 7 (020 7811 3070; thephotographersgallery.org)

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