Prix Pictet: Fire
23 March – 29 April 2023
Opening 23 March at 6pm
Prix Pictet: Fire, featuring powerful photographs exploring the pertinent topic of ‘fire’ presented by thirteen international photographers.
The exhibition will showcase the world-class photography shortlisted for the prestigious Prix Pictet, the global award with a unique commitment to promoting discussion and debate on issues of sustainability and the environment.
The bodies of work nominated for the prize all respond to the theme of ‘fire’, with the shortlisted photographers drawing on both major global events and personal experiences as inspiration. The resulting works span documentary, portraiture, landscape, collage and studies of light and process. The shortlisted photographers are based in five continents across the world.
The exhibition features established names such as Sally Mann, who documented the vast wildfires and thick smoke that consumed the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia during her visit in 2008, and Rinko Kawauchi, who photographed firework displays in Tokyo every summer from 1997-2001. They are joined by young and emerging names in photography, including David Uzochukwu, whose portraiture series In The Wake is set within an unknown landscape on fire, and Fabrice Monteiro, whose series The Prophecy addresses worldwide pollution through staged photographs of figures in costumes made of trash and natural materials.
Shortlist – Prix Pictet: Fire
Fabrice Monteiro, Untitled#9, 2016, from the series The Prophecy, 2013-2020. Courtesy of the artist and ADAGP
Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige (Lebanon)
Rinko Kawauchi (Japan)
Sally Mann (USA)
Christian Marclay (USA/ Switzerland)
Fabrice Monteiro (Belgium/Benin)
Lisa Oppenheim (USA)
Mak Remissa (Cambodia)
Carla Rippey (Mexico)
Mark Ruwedel (USA)
Brent Stirton (South Africa)
David Uzochukwu (Austria/Nigeria)
Daisuke Yokota (Japan)
Sally Mann, Blackwater 32, from the series Blackwater, 2008-2012. Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian.
Winner – Prix Pictet: Fire
Sally Mann is the winner of the 9th cycle of the Prix Pictet, the global award in photography and sustainability. The winner receives a cash prize of 100,000 Swiss Francs (£82,000, USD109,000).
Mann’s winning series Blackwater (2008-2012) is a multifaceted exploration of the devastating wildfires that enveloped the Great Dismal Swamp in southeastern Virginia, where the first slave ships docked in America. In this work, Mann draws a parallel between the all-consuming wildfires she encountered there with racial conflict in America, explaining “The fires in the Great Dismal Swamp seemed to epitomize the great fire of racial strife in America – the Civil War, emancipation, the Civil Rights Movement, in which my family was involved, the racial unrest of the late 1960s and most recently the summer of 2020. Something about the deeply flawed American character seems to embrace the apocalyptic as solution.”
Born in Lexington, Virginia, Mann began studying photography in the late 1960s. Her first solo museum exhibition was at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, in 1977. From the late 1990s into the 2000s, Mann focused on the American South, taking photographs in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana for her series Deep South (2005), as well as Civil War battlefields for Last Measure (2000). A Thousand Crossings, Mann’s recent survey exhibition, explores the identity of the American South and Mann’s relationship with her place of origin. It debuted at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC in 2018 and travelled extensively. Mann is a Guggenheim fellow, three-time recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and was named “America’s Best Photographer” by TIME magazine in 2001.
The Prix Pictet award was founded by the Pictet Group in 2008. Today, it is recognised as the world’s leading prize for photography. Each cycle of the Prix Pictet tours the world, with exhibitions in over a dozen countries annually, bringing the work of the shortlisted photographers to a wide international audience. The Prix Pictet is also published in book form, with extensive documentation of the work of each of the shortlisted photographers together with images from the wider group of nominees and essays by leading writers on the theme of the prize.
The eight previous Prix Pictet winners are Benoît Aquin (Water), Nadav Kander (Earth), Mitch Epstein (Growth), Luc Delahaye (Power), Michael Schmidt (Consumption), Valérie Belin (Disorder), Richard Mosse (Space) and Joana Choumali (Hope).
The Jury for the ninth cycle of the Prix Pictet is: Sir David King, FRS (Chair), Founder and Chair, Centre for Climate Repair, University of Cambridge; Duncan Forbes, Director, Department of Photography, V&A Museum; Emma Bowkett, Director of Photography, FT Weekend Magazine; Professor Herminia Ibarra, Charles Handy Professor of Organisational Behaviour, London Business School; Jeff Rosenheim, Joyce Frank Curator in Charge, Photographs, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Joana Choumali, Winner Prix Pictet ‘Hope’ (2019); Philippe Bertherat, President, Musée d’art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva; Shahira Fahmy, founder and Principal, Shahira Fahmy Architects, Cairo.
Banner image: David Uzochukwu, Ignite, 2020, from the series In the Wake, 2015-2020. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Number 8.