This year's jury for the prestigious international Deutsche Borse Photography Prize has announced four finalists: John Davies, Jacob Holdt, Esko Mannikko and Fazal Sheikh.

The Annual Prize of £30,000 ($60,000) rewards a living photographer, of any nationality, who has made "the most significant contribution to the medium of photography in Europe between 1 October 2006 and 30 September 2007." The Deutsche Borse Photography Prize 2008 is presented by The Photographers’ Gallery, London, where an exhibition of the finalists' work can be seen 8 February to 6 April 2008.

Lens Culture is happy to be able to present more than 40 photographs from the finalists, so you can judge for yourself.

Here is a brief introduction to each of the selected photographers, as written in the press release:

John Davies (b. 1949, UK) has been nominated for The British Landscape at the National Media Museum, Bradford, UK (13 October 2006 – 4 February 2007). His panoramic black and white photographs, taken between 1979 – 2005, document the changing post-industrial British landscape. Coolly detached and combining the monumental with the banal, these works are an ongoing and in-depth study of the relationship between our social, economic and industrial history.

Jacob Holdt (b. 1947, Denmark) has been nominated for his publication Jacob Holdt, United States 1970 – 1975, published by Steidl GwinZegal, Germany (2007). In the early 1970s, Holdt spent five years hitchhiking across the US, living with and documenting the lives of the people he met — from the poorest Southern sharecroppers to some of America’s wealthiest families. Part travelogue, part political essay, his images expose social and racial injustice in Nixon’s America and present a powerful tale of human intimacy, poverty, alienation and protest.

Esko Mannikko (b. 1959, Finland) has been nominated for his retrospective Cocktails 1990 - 2007 at Millesgarden, Stockholm, Sweden (1 September – 4 November 2007). A portraitist of isolation, Mannikko documents with great humour, warmth and integrity the lives of those who inhabit the periphery. Cocktails featured a selection of portraits, still life and landscape photographs from series such as Finnish Series, Organized Freedom and Harmony Sisters. Shown in assorted found wooden frames, weathered by time, his images acquire a timeless, almost painterly quality.

Fazal Sheikh (b. 1965, USA) has been nominated for his publication Ladli, published by Steidl, Germany (2007). Sheikh is an artist-activist who uses photography to create sustained portraits of different communities around the world. His latest project Ladli examines the effects of enduring prejudices against women in contemporary Indian society and highlights – through his powerful black-and-white portraits and the accompanying individual testimonies – the extent to which some women in India are still victims of ancient religious and cultural codes.

Work of each of the finalists is on display 8 February – 6 April 2008, at:

The Photographers' Gallery
5 and 8 Great Newport Street
London WC2H 7HY
www.photonet.org.uk

The winner of the award will be announced Wednesday 5 March 2008.