Rene Matić was announced as the winner of the Prize on 14 May at The Photographers' Gallery by author and broadcaster, Liv Little.

Matić was awarded the Prize for the exhibition AS OPPOSED TO THE TRUTH at CCA Berlin.

Rene Matić said on winning the Prize:

An artist is only one small cog in a large machine of people, workers, communities, organisers and carers who make it possible for ideas to become real and I would not be here without any of these people.

I am rewarded every day by this practice, I really truly would not survive without the radical sustaining power of art, especially now.

Rene Matić was shortlisted for the Prize alongside Weronika Gęsicka, Amak Mahmoodian and Jane Evelyn Atwood.

Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2026 Shortlist

Jane Evelyn Atwood, Weronika Gęsicka, Amak Mahmoodian, Rene Matić

The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation and The Photographers' Gallery have today revealed the shortlist for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2026. The four finalists are Jane Evelyn Atwood, Weronika Gęsicka, Amak Mahmoodian and Rene Matić.

The Prize, originally established in 1996, identifies and rewards artists for an exhibition or book shown or published in Europe within the past 12 months that have made a significant contribution to photography.

Over its long history, the Prize is renowned for spotlighting outstanding and innovative work and celebrating the work of leading international photographers.

The 2026 shortlisted work features collaborative photographic projects; long-term investigative documentary photography; installations, video and sound pieces; and experimental conceptual photography.

The thought-provoking, powerful shortlist explores themes of exile and memory; gender inequalities and advocacy; identity and belonging, subculture and class in contemporary life; and the shifting boundaries between photographic fact and fiction.

The exhibition of selected work from the four artists' shortlisted projects will be on view at The Photographers' Gallery, London, from 6 March to 7 June 2026. It will then be on display from 3 September 2026 to 17 January 2027 at the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation in Eschborn/Frankfurt.

The winner of the £30,000 Prize will be announced at an award ceremony on Thursday, 14 May at The Photographers' Gallery, London, with each of the other shortlisted artists receiving £5,000.

The 2026 shortlisted artists and projects are:

Jane Evelyn Atwood (b. 1947, New York, USA) is shortlisted for her publication "Too Much Time / Trop de Peines", a revised, bilingual reprint of two works originally published in 2000 and updated by Le Bec En L'Air, Marseille in 2024.

Atwood's "Too Much Time / Trop de Peines" stems from a ten-year investigation during which she accompanied incarcerated women in forty prisons across nine countries in the 1990s. Through research and empathy, Atwood documented the lived realities of female inmates: limited access to hygienic facilities, a lack of gynaecological and mental health care, and stark inequalities compared to their male counterparts.

The intimacy of her black-and-white images is rooted in long-term commitment and unwavering advocacy for women in prison – a cause she continues to champion today. Since its original publication, Atwood's message has only become more urgent. Globally, the female prison population has grown by 50-60% since 2000. Driven by a deep commitment to social justice and a desire to expose systems of exclusion, Atwood brings visibility to lives and stories many choose to ignore.

Weronika Gęsicka (b. 1984, Włocławek, Poland) is shortlisted for the publication "Encyclopaedia", published by BLOW UP PRESS and Jednostka Gallery in November 2024.

"Encyclopaedia" draws on a phenomenon: fake entries intentionally inserted into encyclopaedias, dictionaries and lexicons, originally devised as traps to catch copyright violations or as a playful way for editors to leave their mark on the text. These fictitious facts subtly contribute to the erosion of trust in sources once considered authoritative. In "Encyclopaedia", Gęsicka presents several hundred of these fabricated definitions, sourced from historical publications.

By visually reinterpreting fake entries using manipulated stock photos and AI-generated imagery, Gęsicka highlights the tension between truth and invention, as well as the fragile line between fact and fiction. In a world saturated with information, where news, advertising, and fiction increasingly overlap, how can we distinguish what is 'real'?

With AI-generated content becoming a norm and images being easily altered, the project asks: what happens when even a single error appears in a source we trust? In an era marked by misinformation and manipulation, the work is a humorous reminder that knowledge, once perceived as stable and objective, is now a shifting terrain.

Amak Mahmoodian (b. 1980, Shiraz, Iran) is shortlisted for the exhibition "One Hundred and Twenty Minutes", at the Bristol Photo Festival, UK (16 October – 17 November 2024).

Spanning photography, poetry, text, drawing and video, the artist explores emotional and psychological landscapes in exile: how new lives are formed within dreams and the persistent return to the past. Over six years, Mahmoodian worked closely with sixteen collaborators from fourteen countries. Their long-term conversations focused on recurring dreams and the effects of exile on memory and identity.

A multidisciplinary artist and educator, Mahmoodian began her career in Iran and has been based in the UK since 2010, unable to return to her homeland. For her, dreams offer a vital connection to a lost home and family, between reality and imagination. In "One Hundred and Twenty Minutes" – the amount of time adults and children dream each night – Mahmoodian gives visual and poetic form to her collaborators' dreams.

Together, these elements invite us into an immersive experience of shared dreaming. At a time when ideological shifts continue to marginalise migrants and displaced communities, Mahmoodian imagines a world without borders, one where shared dreams form bridges across geography, politics and time.

Rene Matić (b. 1997, Peterborough, UK) is shortlisted for the exhibition "AS OPPOSED TO THE TRUTH", at CCA Berlin, Germany (8 November 2024 – 15 February 2025). Featuring newly produced photographs, installations and sound pieces, "AS OPPOSED TO THE TRUTH" is rooted in identity and belonging, subculture, class and family. Their diaristic, snapshot-like photography captures everyday moments with poetic intimacy. The images, combined with collected objects, film and sound, form a vivid and layered portrait of contemporary life.

Matić's practice spans across photography, film, and sculpture, converging in a meeting place they describe as "rude(ness)" – an evidencing and honouring of the in-between. In a climate of rising right-wing populism and performative compassion, they turn to interpersonal relationships as spaces of resistance and care, how people hold on to one another, and learn to live with vulnerability – despite, or in defiance of, so-called contemporary "truths". For Matić, intimacy, vulnerability and desire become tools for survival.

The 2026 jury:

This year's jury are: Elisa Medde (Director at Foto Colectania Foundation in Barcelona, Spain; former Editor-in-Chief of Foam Magazine), Newsha Tavakolian (photographer and Magnum Photos member), Mark Sealy OBE (Executive Director of Autograph ABP), Anne-Marie Beckmann (Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation) and Shoair Mavlian (The Photographers' Gallery) as voting chair.