55-year-old Briton Paul Graham has won £30,000 (about $43,000) as top award in the 2009 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize presented by The Photographers’ Gallery in the UK. The Prize is awarded to international photographers for their significant contribution to the medium of photography through either an exhibition or publication in Europe.
Graham won for his publication “A Shimmer of Possibility†(steidlMACK, Oct 2007) composed of images from everyday life in today’s America, which The Photographers’ Gallery described as a kind of filmic allusion to the Japanese verse form haiku where nothing much happens but nothing is foreclosed. At once poetic and political, his photographs manage to draw out something truly profound from the almost-nothingness of everyday life.
Together with Graham, the other winners are Kuwait-born Emily Jacir of Saudi Arabia, Tod Papageorge of the USA and Taryn Simon also of the USA. The shortlisted artists were each awarded £3,000. Their works are now display at The Photographers’ Gallery until April 12, 2009.
[Sites: The Photographers’ Gallery, Deutsche Börse]