Release Issued by The Photographers’ Gallery:
Walid Raad/ The Atlas Group wins this year’s Photography Prize
Walid Raad /The Atlas Group (b. 1967, Lebanon), has been awarded the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize for 2007. The Prize value is £30,000 and is awarded to one of the four shortlisted international photographers for their significant contribution to the medium of photography in Europe between 1 October 2005 – 30 September 2006. The Prize is on show and presented by The Photographers’ Gallery, the exhibition continues until 9 April 2007.
Photo above: From the series We decided to let them say, "we are convinced," twice, 2002
Walid Raad /The Atlas Group was awarded the Prize for the recent exhibition The Atlas Group Project at Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart in Berlin, Germany (22 September 2006 – 7 January 2007).
Undertaken between 1989 and 2004, The Atlas Group is a project to research and document the contemporary history of Lebanon. In this project the authenticity of photographic and video documents in the ‘archive’ are queried leaving the viewer uncertain as to how history - in particular one marked by the trauma of civil war - can be told and visually represented. Appearing to be based on one person’s memories, it also draw on cultural fantasies constructed from the material of the collective memory.
Brett Rogers, Chair of the Jury and Director of The Photographers’ Gallery, said:
‘This year’s shortlist demonstrates the immediacy and power of the photographic image when pushed to its limits by contemporary artists and photographers. Each of them explores important global issues but none more urgent and powerful than that of Walid Raad /The Atlas Group. Raad’s work opens up new possibilities for reinterpreting photography’s role in the construction of ‘history’ especially in connection with his main project on the Lebanese Civil Wars. He demonstrates a new form of conceptual practice, one that combines the poetic with the political, and yet remains playfully engaging. Through his work Walid Raad questions the role of authorship and authenticity ‘ fact as a process’ presenting the world and its functions as a complex layer of systems.’
Walid Raad / The Atlas Group was chosen by the Jury - Krysztof Candrowicz (Poland), Director, Lodz Art Center; Shirana Shahbazi, (Iran) artist & winner of The Photographers’ Gallery’s 2002 Photography Prize; Urs Stahel, (Switzerland) Director, Fotomuseum Winterthur and Anne-Marie Beckmann, (Frankfurt), Curator, Art Collection Deutsche Börse.
The other shortlisted photographers in this year’s Prize, each being awarded £3,000, are: Philippe Chancel (France), Anders Petersen (Sweden), and Fiona Tan (Indonesia). The work included in the exhibition ranges from photojournalism to intimate social photography and from the exploration of the complexity of culture and place to the documentation of contemporary history. For further information on each of the shortlisted photographer’s work on display please visit the gallery website:
www.photonet.org.uk
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