At the end of the day, Ethridge lost out to Jim Goldberg, another American photographer, who was presented the £30,000 award by broadcaster and critic Miranda Sawyer at a special ceremony today at Ambika P3 Gallery in London.
Ethridge did not go away empty-handed, however. He and the other two finalists -- Thomas Demand and Elad Lassry -- were awarded consolation prizes of £3,000, plus the show of the finalists they've been in in London and a huge amount of publicity for being finalists.
Interestingly, this year's show had come under fire in England because conceptual, staged photographs seemed to be the dominant practice of the finalists. Goldberg's work, however, comes out of the documentary tradition, although he uses lots of non-traditional forms of display, including videos as well as still photography.
This year's Jury for the Prize consisted of Alex Farquharson (Director, Nottingham Contemporary); Marloes Krijnen (Founding Director, Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam); Joel Sternfeld (artist, USA); and Anne-Marie Beckmann (Curator, Deutsche Börse Art Collection, Germany).
Congratulations to all, and we will wait for next year to see if photographers with Southern backgrounds continue to have a place in this competition.