It’s interesting how arts award announcements can stir such emotions among the United Kingdom's intelligentsia . But it’s even more interesting when the announcement creates conversation among the masses. Notorious for raising passionate debate, the Turner Prize nominations—and subsequent winners—make sensational headlines from the tabloids, broadsheets, and television.

Each year, up to four artists are nominated, the winner receives £40,000 (about $80,000), and £5000 (roughly $9929) is awarded to all three runners-up. For consideration, artists need be under 50, with an outstanding 12 months of artistic work, and exhibitions leading up to the nomination. Aside from the financial gain, these artists are propelled into the public sphere in the most populist fashion. The most famous nominee of recent years was Tracy Emin with "My Bed". Although she didn’t win, there wasn’t a person in the UK who didn’t have an opinion on the work, leading to the ultimate question on everyone’s lips: “What's the point of contemporary art?”

The announcement of the Turner shortlist for 2007 has already been accused of being within the realm of the highly political; its selection of artists who actually have something to say seems to be a novelty for the critics. Aside from the nominations, the location appears to have caused a stir, too. Normally, the Turner Prize takes place in London; but. in order to promote regionalism, the award has moved to Tate Liverpool, in the Northwest of England (also the 2008 European Capital of Culture). Which, I guess, isn't a bad thing...

This year’s nominations include the talented photographer and filmmaker Zarina Bhimji, alongside Nathan Coley, Mike Nelson and Mark Wallinger.

The work of all four nominated artists stems from personal political experience. In recent times, the Turner Prize has gained a reputation for selecting artists “without talent or content—artists who haven’t lived” and are, therefore, open to mockery. But much of contemporary art in Britain has been about self-mockery and parodies, relying on an intellectual interpretation rather than actual craft-based work.

Over the years, Zarina has created magical photographic and moving images that penetrate the psyche. Despite its intellectual nature, her work is completely accessible, her sensual approach cleverly disguised with aspects of the avant-garde and, to some extent, the surrealists (not that the work is surreal; it just seems to have a subliminal surrealist ideology, ultimately working on the notion of subversion without being in one's face).

My bet is on Zarina, simply because she's a thoroughly talented artist and has had staying power—her work is that of an exile—constantly political, created in a non-narrative style. She, like Sebastiao Salgado, to some extent, looks at the displaced and their (imagined) homelands within capitalist structures—although Salgado is more documentary-based and with supreme magical realist vision—Zarina creates “non-fiction” renditions of the human soul, with much of her work positioned in nature.

For me, what stood out was her exhibition entitled "1822-Now", created in 1993. Through “classical” photography, Zarina produced simple yet profound imagery.

With an extraordinary body of work and a humble, dedicated approach to her art, Zarina Bhimji encapsulates the Indian notion of tapasya, wherein a person is devoted, without distraction or pomposity, to explore, understand, and present to the world, truly open to its judgment.

Zarina Bhimji, 2003; photographed by Ian Berry (born 1934, Lancashire, England)

Berry made his reputation as a photojournalist with his reporting from South Africa, where he worked for the Daily Mail and, later, Drum magazine. He was the only photographer to document the massacre at Sharpeville, and his photographs were used in the trial proving the victims’ innocence.

Henrì Cartìer-Bresson invited Berry to join the Magnum agency in 1962, when he was based in Paris. He moved to London, in 1964, to become the first contract photographer for Observer Magazine.

Assignments have taken him around the world. He documented Russia's invasion of Czechoslovakia; conflict in Israel, Ireland, Vietnam and Congo; famine in Ethiopia; and apartheid in South Africa. It was from the latter major body of work that two of his books were produced: Black and Whites L'Afrique du Sud (with a foreword by the then French President Mitterrand), and Living Apart.

Important editorial assignments include work for National Geographic, Fortune, Stern, GEO, national Sunday magazines, Esquire, Paris Match and Life. Berry has also reported on the political and social transformations evident in China and the former USSR.  Recent projects involved retracing the steps of the original Silk Road through Turkey, Iran and Southern Central Asia to Northern China for Condé Nast Traveler, photographing Berlin for a Stern supplement, the Three Gorges Dam project for Telegraph Magazine and Greenland, for a book on climate control.