Congratulations to Heroine Deana Lawson
Deutsche Börse Prize Winner 2022
Deana Lawson wins the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2022
Among the twenty-first century’s leading women in photography, Deana Lawson has been announced this year’s winner of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize.
One of the most prestigious accolades in contemporary art, the prize rewards artists and projects recognised as having made a significant contribution to international photography over the past 12 months.
Chosen from a shortlist of four outstanding artists, including Gilles Peress, Anastasia Samoylova, and fellow Contemporary Heroine Jo Ractliffe, Deana was announced as the 2022 winner at a special ceremony at The Photographers’ Gallery (TPG), London, on Thursday, 12 May 2022.
Praising Deana’s ‘distinctive and provocative approach to image making’, the jury commented upon the artist’s expert ability to reframe and reclaim the Black experience via her photography.
Deana’s recent solo exhibition, Centropy (Kunsthalle Basel, 9 June – 11 October 2020) was the catalyst behind her receipt of the award. A portraiture series which explores intergenerational relationships and their effects within Black culture, the work harnesses the trope of family photographs while imbuing domestic settings with elements of the uncanny.
Employing symbolic details as ‘portals’ into other worlds, Deana includes spiritual iconography and emblematic natural phenomena such as waterfalls, galaxies, and crystals ‘to convey a realm beyond our present consciousness.’
The finalists’ exhibition, which includes work by all four shortlisted artists, will be on view at the Photographers’ Gallery, London, from 25th March to 12th June. The exhibition will then tour to the headquarters of Deutsche Börse in Eschborn near Frankfurt/Main, and can be visited there from 30th June, 2022.
