Rene Matić Takes the Prize
A very contemporary photography gallery. The Deutsche Börse Prize exhibition closes at The Photographers' Gallery on 7 June.
Week of 7 June 2026
A week defined largely by the closing of one major gallery show and the anticipation building around another: the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2026 exhibition at The Photographers' Gallery comes to an end this weekend, while just up the road, the V&A's sprawling American Photographs display continues its year-long run. Elsewhere, the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation has published its 2026 photography book shortlist, and Rencontres d'Arles is drawing closer, with new details emerging about the autumn's most significant photography event in Europe.
The Photographic Arts
Deutsche Börse Prize: Rene Matić Wins £30,000
The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2026, one of the most significant awards in European photography, was won last month by Rene Matić, with the announcement made at The Photographers' Gallery in London on 14 May. Matić, born in Peterborough in 1997, was recognised for their exhibition AS OPPOSED TO THE TRUTH, which ran at CCA Berlin from November 2024 to February 2025. The £30,000 prize was selected by a jury drawn from Autograph ABP, Foto Colectania Foundation, Magnum Photos and The Photographers' Gallery itself.
Matić's work has been widely characterised as exploring British identity — queerness, race, and belonging — with a visual language described by The Guardian as giving "the camera a tool for solidarity, kinship and activism." Often compared to Wolfgang Tillmans in approach, Matić is one of the more distinctive British voices to have emerged in recent years.
The other shortlisted artists each received £5,000. They were: Jane Evelyn Atwood, recognised for her long-running project Too Much Time / Trop de Peines on women incarcerated in Europe; Weronika Gęsicka, for Encyclopaedia, her compositionally inventive body of work reworking mid-century stock images; and Amak Mahmoodian, for One Hundred and Twenty Minutes.
The exhibition of all four artists' shortlisted work closes at The Photographers' Gallery, 16–18 Ramillies Street, London W1F, this Sunday, 7 June. It transfers to the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation in Eschborn/Frankfurt from 3 September 2026 to 17 January 2027.
Coming Soon at The Photographers' Gallery: Japanese Women Photographers
With the Deutsche Börse show closing, The Photographers’ Gallery turns to its next major exhibition: Japanese Women Photographers: From 1950s to Now, opening 24 June and running through 27 September 2026. Billed as a major reframing of the history of Japanese photography, the show focuses on women practitioners across nearly eight decades. An artist talk with KATAYAMA Mari and TAWADA Yuki is scheduled for the evening of 24 June to coincide with the opening.
Also still on view at the gallery's Print Sales space until 28 June is Nicholas Hughes: Uncertain Silence, a solo exhibition exploring landscape and atmospheric light.
Photography books — the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation has announced its 2026 photography book shortlist.
Kraszna-Krausz 2026 Book Awards Shortlist
The Kraszna-Krausz Foundation has announced the shortlist for its 2026 Book Awards in the Photography category. The four shortlisted titles are:
The Fold by Hoda Afshar (Loose Joints) — a critical reassessment of photography's colonial entanglements, drawing on the archive of Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault and his photographs of veiled subjects. Juror Fiona Rogers describes the book's cumulative effect as "dizzying and deliberately disorientating."
Too Many Products Too Much Pressure by Janet Delaney (Deadbeat Club) — a portrait of Delaney's father in his final week as a beauty-product salesman, described by juror Diane Smyth as "gentle, humorous and ultimately moving."
Red Horse by Sasha Kurmaz (Éditions Images Vevey) — a visceral personal testimony of living through the war in Ukraine, described as a constantly reshaping archive of everyday life under conflict.
Index2025 by Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa (Roma Publications) — a conceptually dense exploration of photography's unfixed nature and the documentary genre, noted for its materiality and structural fragility.
The winners in the Photography and Moving Image categories will share a £10,000 prize fund, with the announcement due later in June. The longlisted titles were exhibited at Photo London in May (13–17 May 2026) and will be on display at the POST × Kraszna-Krausz Photobook Weekender on 4–5 July 2026.
American Photographs at the V&A
The V&A South Kensington's display American Photographs continues its extended run through May 2027. Drawing inspiration from Walker Evans' canonical 1938 photobook of the same name, the exhibition brings together over 300 works from the V&A's holdings — one of the largest American photography collections outside the United States — spanning from 1840 to the present day. Artists include Walker Evans himself, alongside Cindy Sherman, Catherine Opie, Doris Ulmann and Diana Matar, tracing the evolution of American visual identity from the 1840s through to contemporary practice.
Small Town Inertia 2 — Jim Mortram
In the quieter corners of British documentary photography, Jim Mortram's second volume, Small Town Inertia 2, has been drawing considerable attention since its publication. Crowdfunded via Kickstarter and available in softcover at £25 from imageandreality.co.uk, the book continues Mortram's long-running project documenting people falling through the gaps of the welfare state — those who rarely feature in mainstream photojournalism. The work is shot almost entirely in the homes of his subjects, which gives it a claustrophobic intimacy that distinguishes it from conventional street or documentary work.
The project came to wider notice this week after Mortram was reportedly banned from Meta platforms following what is understood to be malicious false reports, severely limiting his ability to promote the new book. As a full-time carer who relies heavily on social media, the situation has been described by fellow photographers as particularly difficult. His work continues to attract comparisons to Cartier-Bresson in its use of negative space and considered composition.
Photography in a southern French setting — Rencontres d'Arles opens on 6 July 2026, running to 4 October.
Rencontres d'Arles 2026: Opening 6 July
With barely a month to go, the programme for the 57th Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles is taking shape. Running from 6 July to 4 October 2026 under the theme Des mondes à relire (Worlds to Reread), the festival will present 46 exhibitions across 27 historic sites in the city. The programme this year places considerable emphasis on African and Mediterranean visual narratives, alternating archival material with emerging voices.
Among the highlights confirmed in advance is a major tribute to mark the centenary of William Klein — the American-born, Paris-based photographer and filmmaker whose confrontational street photography of New York, Tokyo and Rome defined a significant strand of mid-century visual culture. Klein, who died in 2022, would have turned 100 in 2026.
A notable addition to Arles this summer is the Fonds Bustamante, a new cultural institution opening on 9 July 2026 — during the festival's launch week — in a premises at 27 rue de la Chartreuse, Arles. Founded by French artist Jean-Marc Bustamante, who first exhibited at Arles in 1973, the foundation opens with an inaugural exhibition, En Miroirs, presenting Bustamante's own work alongside pieces by artists he has personally selected. Featured artists include Cristina Iglesias, Rodney Graham, Franz West and Thomas Schütte. The foundation plans to operate an exhibition programme aligned with Arles' two main annual cultural moments — the Drawing Festival in spring and the Rencontres each summer. Entry is €9, with concessions available.
Also This Week
Gear, Glass & Light
Rumours around a Leica SL3-P have been circulating this week, with Daily Camera News suggesting a June 2026 announcement may be close — though nothing has been confirmed. There has been some discussion in the Fujifilm community this week, with a Fuji X Weekly post titled "Is There a Fujifilm Exodus?" examining whether some longtime Fuji users are moving platforms, though the piece stops short of firm conclusions.
Film & Analogue
Nothing of major note from the film and analogue world this week. A YouTube round-up covering new film stocks, Negative Lab Pro updates and a new light meter was published by the Film Photography Project community, which may be worth a look for analogue practitioners, but no specific new stock or product announcements emerged.
The Digital Darkroom
Capture One's 6% price increase — first noted here last week — came into sharper focus this week as Newsshooter published a detailed cost comparison. Capture One Pro now runs at approximately $18/month on an annual plan, placing it above Adobe's Photography Plan (Lightroom + Lightroom Classic + Photoshop from $10.99/month). The new prices apply from renewal dates after 6 July 2026. DxO meanwhile released PureRAW 6.2, described as delivering a significant performance boost for macOS alongside improved Lightroom integration and a more streamlined workflow.
Looking Ahead
The Kraszna-Krausz 2026 prize winners will be announced later this month — four strong shortlisted titles make the outcome difficult to predict. The Photographers' Gallery's Japanese Women Photographers exhibition opens 24 June, the same week that the Fotohane × The Art House show opens in Wakefield (20 June–1 August). Rencontres d'Arles opens 6 July; early booking for accommodation in Arles during that week is strongly advised. The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2026 is accepting entries until its second-round deadline passes — shortlisted work is due at collection points by early June.
