The Guardian has published its review of this year's Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize exhibition, and its verdict on the shortlist show is one of strong, mixed feeling: images, the review's headline promises, "to enrage, bamboozle and deeply move you".

The review takes particular interest in two of the shortlisted artists: the American photographer Donna Gottschalk and the French curator and writer Hélène Giannecchini. Their inclusion gives this year's prize an unusual shape. One is a photographer whose work comes from lived experience. The other works with images as a writer and curator. Together they signal what the prize currently rewards.

Who is on the shortlist?

The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize runs each year. It recognises a living photographer, of any nationality, for a specific body of work or project shown in Europe during the eligible period. The winner receives a substantial cash award and considerable institutional standing.

Donna Gottschalk's nomination rests on her longstanding documentary practice. She photographed her own circles over decades, with intimacy and directness. Her pictures record communities that mainstream institutions long ignored. That personal archive is now receiving institutional attention at the highest level of the prize system.

Hélène Giannecchini represents a different model of practice. Her nomination reflects work that thinks about photographs rather than simply making them. The Guardian's reviewer finds both approaches worth close attention.

What does the review actually say?

The headline sets the terms. Some images enrage. Some bamboozle. Some move the viewer deeply. That is not a bland verdict. It suggests a shortlist that provokes disagreement rather than consensus.

The reviewer engages with Gottschalk's photographs as documents of a life and a community. The work carries conviction because it was made from inside its subject, not from outside it. This is the strength the review keeps returning to.

Giannecchini's contribution receives a more probing read. Work that operates on the level of ideas asks different things of an audience. The review weighs whether those demands pay off. Its tone stays measured throughout, favorable where the work earns it, skeptical where it does not.

The takeaway: this is a shortlist built on conviction, and the review treats it seriously on those terms.

Why does this prize matter?

The Deutsche Börse prize has become one of the most closely watched awards in photography. Its shortlist functions as an annual statement about the field's direction. Nominees move into museum collections, monographs and touring exhibitions on the strength of it.

A shortlist pairing Gottschalk with Giannecchini tells us something. The prize now treats photography as both making and thinking. It rewards the archive and the argument. Whether that broadening strengthens or dilutes the award is a fair question, and one the Guardian review implicitly raises.

The review's framing also matters for the artists. For Gottschalk, it marks late institutional recognition of work made far from the art world's centre. For Giannecchini, it places curatorial and critical practice inside a prize once reserved for photographers proper.

What happens next?

The exhibition of the shortlisted work remains the place to judge these arguments in person. The prize winner will be announced after the jury reviews the show, and the Guardian's review positions itself as one voice in that conversation rather than the final word.

Readers can follow the outcome when the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation declares this year's winner.

Note: this report is based on the review's headline and framing. Readers should consult the full Guardian review for the critic's detailed assessments of individual works.