Deutsche Börse Photography Prize Shortlist Features Surveillance, Sabotage and War in Ukraine

The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation prize, a European award for photography, is celebrating its 30th anniversary, and its shortlist was published on 29 October 2026. The prize recognises an artist for an exhibition or book in Europe that has made a significant contribution to photography over the past 12 months. Four artists are nominated.

Salvatore Vitale

Italian artist Salvatore Vitale (born 1986 in Palermo) is shortlisted for Sabotage, shown at Photo Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland. The exhibition examines the hidden human labour that sustains the digital economy, along with automation, surveillance and algorithmic control. Developed with South African freelancers, it combines photography, film and sculptural installations.

Hoda Afshar

Hoda Afshar (born 1983 in Tehran, Iran) is nominated for Performing the Invisible at the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac in Paris. At its centre is The Fold, an investigation into the legacy of colonial photographic practice. Afshar worked with the archive of French psychiatrist Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault (1872–1934), which contains thousands of photographs taken in Morocco, and uses the motif of the mirror to make the act of looking itself the object of inquiry.

Sasha Kurmaz

Sasha Kurmaz (born 1986 in Kyiv, Ukraine) is shortlisted for the publication Red Horse, issued by Éditions Images Vevey. He began the project after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The 800-page visual diary brings together documentary photographs, collages, notes, drawings and newspaper cuttings.

Lotus L Kang

Lotus L Kang (born 1985 in Toronto, Canada) is nominated for the installation The Face of Desire is Loss, presented at the Bvlgari Pavilion in the Giardini della Biennale, Venice, in 2026. It combines photography, film and sculpture. Lengths of unfixed photographic film respond to light and humidity, while 49 bottles of spirits reflect the days a soul spends between death and rebirth in Buddhist belief.