Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin have won the 2013 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize for their recent work War Primer 2. They are the first artist duo ever to scoop the prize. The other nominated artists were Mishka Henner for No Man's Land, Chris Killip for What Happened Great Britain 1970-1990 and Cristina De Middel for The Afronauts.
All the shortlisted work is on display at The Photographers' Gallery until 30 June 2013. It will be followed by a presentation at the Deutsche Börse headquarters in Frankfurt/Eschborn from 12 September to 31 October.
War Primer 2 originated as a limited edition book that physically inhabits the pages of Bertolt Brecht's 1955 publication War Primer, a collection of Brecht's newspaper clippings, each accompanied by a four-line poem. The title deliberately recalls the textbooks used to teach elementary school children how to read; Brecht's book is a practical manual, demonstrating how to "read" or "translate" press photographs. Where the original was concerned with images of the Second World War, War Primer 2 updates Brecht's piece with found images of conflict generated by both sides of the "War on Terror".
War Primer 2 was produced in the artists' studio in a limited edition of 100 copies, applying silkscreen and offset printed images to 100 copies of a 1998 edition of Brecht's work. A digital version including critical and academic essays about War Primer is available as a free app or pdf.
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