Luke Willis Thompson Wins 2018 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize

On May 17, New Zealand artist Luke Willis Thompson was awarded the 21st Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize at a ceremony at The Photographers’ Gallery in London. 

Thompson, a 2018 Turner Prize nominee, received the USD 40,000 photography award for his 35mm film Autoportrait (2017). First exhibited in London’s Chisenhale Gallery in 2017, the work is a silent filmic portrait of Diamond Reynolds, a young African-American woman whose partner, Philando Castile, was shot dead by a police officer in St. Anthony, Minnesota, on July 6, 2016. 

In November that same year, Thompson invited Reynolds to collaborate on what would become Autoportrait, presenting the subject in silent contemplation in contrast to images of the grieving woman disseminated by international media in the aftermath of the shooting. 

Brett Rogers, director of the Photographers’ Gallery and non-voting jury chair, commented in a statement that Thompson’s “singular and uncompromising portrait, made in collaboration with its subject, Diamond Reynolds, was conceived as a way to return agency to the protagonist.”

In addition to Rogers, the jury included Ann-Marie Beckmann, the director of Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation; Duncan Forbes, curator and visiting research fellow at Westminster University; British artist, curator and founder of Photoworks magazine Gordon MacDonald; and American photographer and artist Penelope Umbrico. 

The winning piece was selected from a shortlist that included French-Venezuelan artist Mathieu Asselin’s series, "Monsanto: A Photographic Investigation" (2017); Polish photographer Rafal Milach’s exhibition "Refusal" (2017); and Swiss-born, Amsterdam-based artist Batia Suter's publication, Parallel Encyclopedia #2 (2016). 

An exhibition featuring the four shortlisted artists is on display at The Photographers’ Gallery, London, until June 3, 2018, before traveling to the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, where it will remain on view from June 22 to September 9 as part of the RAY Photography Triennial this year. 

The annual Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize was launched by The Photographers’ Gallery in 1996 to support innovation and excellence in photography. It has been held in partnership with the Deutsche Börse Group since 2005, and was given its current title in 2015 to reflect the establishment of the corporation’s not-for-profit foundation, dedicated to collecting and promoting contemporary photography.

Tianhui Huang is an editorial intern of ArtAsiaPacific.

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