Artist, who shot film on iPhone, wins Turner Prize

Contemporary artist Charlotte Prodger, who shot for a series of short clips entirely on an iPhone has won the Turner Prize. The snippets, narrated by Prodger, feature such disparate visuals as views of the Scottish countryside from a train window, a T-shirt on a radiator and a cat pawing at a lamp. Charlotte Prodger was awarded the £25,000 UK art prize.

Apple CEO Tim Cook congratulated the artist on his Twitter handle. He said

“A first for a film shot on iPhone, and another milestone in the democratization of photography and filmmaking”.

Filmed during the span of a year, her award-winning work explores themes of class, gender, sexuality and neolithic goddesses. All the while, Prodger’s deeply personal voiceover recalls her coming out in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in the early ’90s and people being unable to tell whether she is a boy or girl.

“It ends up being so unexpectedly expansive. This is not what we expect from video clips shot on iPhones,” said Alex Farquharson, director of Tate Britain, who chaired the judging panel.

The Turner Prize is as renowned for its divisive and controversial nature as its cultural standing. Previous nominees have included an interactive computer simulation of Osama Bin Laden’s hideout and Tracy Emin’s infamous unmade bed, which lost out to Steve McQueen’s collection of film pieces and visual installations in 1999.

In the past, Apple’s smartphones have been used by filmmakers to shoot feature films, most notably Sean Baker’s Sundance hit, Tangerine and Steven Soderbergh’s paranoid thriller, Unsane starring Claire Foy from Netflix’s The Crown.