Rene Matić wins Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize for identity study

Rene Matić has won the 2026 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, taking the £30,000 top award for AS OPPOSED TO THE TRUTH, the CCA Berlin exhibition that turned identity, belonging and family history into a layered photographic statement. For a prize that claims to honor the most significant contribution to international contemporary photography in Europe over the past 12 months, the choice feels pointed: institutions are rewarding work that is diaristic, personal and culturally mixed, not just formally rigorous.

The prize was announced at The Photographers’ Gallery in London on Thursday, 14 May 2026. Matić, born in Peterborough in 1997 and now based in London, works across photography, film, installation and sculpture, and AS OPPOSED TO THE TRUTH matched that range with newly produced photographs, installations and sound pieces. The exhibition ran at CCA Berlin from 8 November 2024 to 15 February 2025, and its concerns were clear enough to read as a snapshot of a generation’s anxieties and loyalties: identity, belonging, subculture, class and family.

That mix is exactly what has made Matić’s work feel current. The pictures are described as snapshot-like and diaristic, but the point is not looseness for its own sake. The work gathers objects, film and sound into a portrait of contemporary life that feels lived-in rather than staged for institutional polish. Shoair Mavlian, director of The Photographers’ Gallery, said Matić’s deeply personal work is rooted in community and belonging and brings the story of Britain today to audiences outside the UK.

Matić beat a shortlist that also included Jane Evelyn Atwood, Weronika Gęsicka and Amak Mahmoodian. Each of the other shortlisted artists received £5,000, while the shortlist exhibition itself ran at The Photographers’ Gallery from 6 March to 7 June 2026 and will travel to the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation in Eschborn, near Frankfurt, from 3 September 2026 to 17 January 2027.

The win also fits Matić’s broader trajectory. The artist, who graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2020 and was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2025, has built a practice around Britishness, faith, queerness and in-betweenness. In a prize culture that once leaned harder toward detached formal invention, Matić’s victory suggests the center of gravity has shifted. The work that is getting crowned now is more likely to be intimate, socially alert and a little rough around the edges, because that is where contemporary photography feels most alive.