This year’s Deutsche Börse photography prize shortlist show is, as ever, a study in dramatically contrasting approaches to the medium. On one floor of The Photographers’ Gallery, Deana Lawson’s elaborately constructed tableaux of Black experience, which draw on, and deftly subvert, studio portraiture, documentary and vernacular traditions, give way to Gilles Peress’s visceral reportage from the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The two seem worlds apart.
Likewise, on a separate floor, there’s a jolting shift from the vivid colours and disorienting compositions of Anastasia Samoylova’s Miami to Jo Ractliffe’s stark South African landscapes. While traditional and contemporary strategies rub uneasily up against each other throughout, there is a kind of unity in the themes of community and belonging, struggle and self-definition.
