Launching this week at The Photographers’ Gallery is an exhibition of works by the four shortlisted photographers for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2014. The criteria asks that the nominees are redefining traditional notions of photography – this year’s lensers exploring everything from technicolor warfare to gender, identity and the self.

There’s Richard Mosse for his rainbow portrayals of rebel leaders in the eastern Congo, an attempt to rethink war photography; Alberto García-Alix, nominated for his publication, Autorretrato/Selfportrait, a series of monochrome self portraits taken over four decades that explores the notion of a shifting self; Lorna Simpson for her use of photography, text and video installations to explore and blur the lines between gender, identity, culture, memory and body; and Jochen Lempert for his peculiar and vivid black and white studies of humans and animals. 

As Brett Rogers, director of The Photographers’ Gallery and chair of the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize jury explains, the connecting string here is a hauntingly honest approach to storytelling via boundary-pushing techniques.

Tempe Nakiska: Various visual mediums – photography, video, text – are explored through the nominees work. How do you feel such combinations work together to form a message in contemporary photography today?
Brett Rogers: We feel that these artists choice of different media reflects very clearly the increasing interest within photography today, where artists maintain an open mind and choose whatever media best suits their subject – freely moving between the still and moving image and text as well. These concerns were of course already developed in the 1980s and 90s but seem today to be even more apparent.

In the age of the digital everything is possible. The artists use text in very different ways, Lorna Simpson for replacing information that is not included in the images and working around memory. Richard Mosse adds text to give information about the setting and background of the images.

TN: What kind of political messages are explored?
BR: Richard Mosse’s work clearly deals with the most direct political issue – the ‘invisible’ civil war taking place in the Congo. Lorna Simpson also addresses issues which are political in the exploration of identity, race and gender. It is inconceivable that Garcia-Alix could have produced such a powerful body of work at an earlier time than post-Franco Spain.

TN: What do you look for in the winner of the prize?
BR: The jury is looking for the ‘most significant’ body of work – the body of work which to them signals the most outstanding achievement within that year – it is definitely not a lifetime achievement award but an award for an outstanding body of work by an artist.

The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2014 exhibition runs until 22nd June 2014 at The Photographers’ Gallery, 16-18 Ramillies St, London W1F 7LW.

The winner of the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2014 will be announced at The Photographers’ Gallery on 12th May 2014.