Sophie Ristelhueber Wins ‘Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2010’

Sophie Ristelhueber has been awarded the ’Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2010’. At a special ceremony Wednesday 17 March 2010 in London, the film director Terry Gilliam presented the award. The £30,000 prize rewards an international photo-grapher for their significant contribution to the medium of photography in Europe during the past year.

Sophie Ristelhueber (1949, France) won for her retrospective Sophie Ristelhueber (at the Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – March 2009). For over 25 years, using photography and, more recently, moving image, Ristelhueber has investigated the impact of human conflict upon architecture and landscape in places such as Bosnia, France, Iraq, Lebanon and Kuwait. Often playing with an ambiguity of scale in her installations, Ristelhueber’s work confounds traditional photographic genres and unsentimentally draws attention to the scars and traces we leave behind, addressing the essence of our human existence.

The jury this year was: Olivia Maria Rubio, Exhibition Leader, La Fàbrica (Spain), Gilane Tawadros, Executive, Design Artists Copyright Society, Curator and Author (Great Britain), James Welling, Artist (USA) and Anne-Marie Beckmann, Curator, Art Collection Deutsche Börse (Germany).

The other shortlisted photographers in this year’s Prize, each awarded £3,000, are: Anna Fox (1961, Great Britain), Zoe Leonard (1961, USA) and Donovan Wylie (1971, Great Britain).

Brett Rogers, Chair of the Jury and Director of The Photographers’ Gallery, said on behalf of the jury: “ Sophie Ristelhueber ‘s fragmented images explore the terrain of the real and imagined, addressing urgent issues of trauma, loss memory and conflict. Devoid of drama, her surgically precise images, radically installed, push the boundaries of the photographic medium.”

Alexandra Hachmeister, Head of Corporate Responsibility for Deutsche Börse, stated: “We congratulate Sophie Ristelhueber on being awarded the Deutsche Börse Photo­graphy Prize 2010. We are delighted to be Prize Sponsor of this prestigious award for the sixth time. Thanks to all those who have contributed - the Gallery staff, the Academy, the jury and above all the artists - the prize has become one of the most important contemporary photography awards worldwide. We would thus like to thank them all for their engagement and contribution.”

Deutsche Börse has sponsored this prestigious prize since 2005. The prize was originally set up in 1996 by The Photographers' Gallery in London to promote the best of contemporary photography. The focus is on the promotion of young talents and the acknowledgement of outstanding works of international Photographic Art. Previous winners of the “Deutsche Börse Photography Prize” are Paul Graham (2009), Esko Männikkö (2008), Walid Raad/ the Atlas Group (2007), Robert Adams (2006) and Luc Delahaye (2005).

The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2010is on show at the Photographers’ Gallery until 18 April 2010. The exhibition will tour to Frankfurter Kunstverein (13 Mai to 25 July 2010).

Further information

The sponsoring of photographic art is an important part of Deutsche Börse Group’s sponsoring activities. The Art Collection includes more than 700 works, most of them large-size, by over 70 international artists. The art works are shown in the Group’s headquarters in Frankfurt, Eschborn and Luxembourg. The group hosts changing exhibitions of mainly younger photographers on a regular basis. Deutsche Börse offers guided tours through the collection and also supports exhibition projects in various German and international museums and institutions.