Four artists have been shortlisted for the 2027 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, one of the most closely watched awards in contemporary photography. Hoda Afshar, Lotus L. Kang, Sasha Kurmaz and Salvatore Vitale were named by the Photographers' Gallery in London and the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation, as the prize marks the 30th anniversary of its first edition.

The prize recognises an exhibition or book shown in Europe over the past year that has made a significant contribution to photography. The shared thread is an interest in how images shape understanding of bodies, war, labour, memory and power.

Hoda Afshar, born in Tehran in 1983, is shortlisted for Performing the Invisible, shown at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris. Working across photographs, drawings, mirrors, video and sound, the exhibition treats photography as both revelation and control, and at its centre sits The Fold, a long inquiry into the colonial legacy of photographic practice. Drawing on the archive of French psychiatrist and photographer Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault, Afshar examines how bodies, particularly veiled Islamic bodies, have been looked at and consumed.

Lotus L. Kang is recognised for The face of desire is loss, presented in the Bulgari Pavilion during the 61st Venice Biennale, an installation bringing photography, film and sculpture together around bodies, memory, change and loss. Sasha Kurmaz is shortlisted for work including the series Red Horse, while Salvatore Vitale is recognised for Death by GPS, a series spanning 2022 to 2026. Together the four projects ask how images mediate desire and memory, the human cost of the digital economy, survival during conflict and the politics of looking itself.

Selected work from all four shortlisted projects will go on view at the Photographers' Gallery in London from 10 March to 6 June 2027, before travelling to the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation in Eschborn, near Frankfurt, from 19 June to 26 September 2027. The winner, announced in April 2027, will receive £30,000, with each of the other shortlisted artists receiving £5,000.