The Photography Prize, run annually by the Photographers’ Gallery in central London, is now in its ninth year and has acquired a status in its field roughly equivalent to that of the Turner Prize in contemporary art – which was, in fact, its original inspiration. The lines of demarcation between the two awards have become increasingly difficult to draw, in recent years, given that so many contemporary artists use photographic media so extensively in their work. But whereas the Turner Prize is only given to British artists under a certain age, the Photography Prize – sponsored this year for the first time by Deutsche Borse – operates no such restrictions, being open to photographers of any age and nationality. This year’s shortlist is arguably the strongest yet, and certainly the most varied.

The French photographer Luc Delahaye (born 1962) has been nominated for his panoramic photographs of scenes from contemporary history, ranging from the war in Iraq to the trial of Slobodan Milosevic. J.H. Engstrom (born 1969), is a Swedish photographer selected for a very different body of work, autobiographical in content and lyrical in mood. Jorg Sasse (born 1962) appropriates found pictures and manipulating them in a variety of intriguing ways. The last nominee, Stephen Shore, by some distance the most senior photographer on the list (born 1947), has been selected for a new and expanded edition of a book of photographs originally taken on the road in America in the 1970s and entitled Uncommon Places. The exhibition of shortlisted work which opened last week is necessarily limited in scale, given the modest dimensions of the Photographers’ Gallery. Nevertheless, it amounts to an impressive and sensitively hung display of pictures by some of the most gifted and original photographers at work today.

The exhibition opens with the work...

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