Prix Pictet – Fire provides genuine social commentary
Photos of Prix Pictet – Fire
Wildfire, David Uzochukwu, 2015. From the series: In The Wake, 2015-2020 © David Uzochukwu, Galerie Number 8, Brussels, Prix Pictet. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Number 8
Prix Pictet – Fire opportunity to view tour
The Prix Pictet – Fire cycle photography tour provides an opportunity to appreciate photography. On display at the Asia Society Hong Kong Center are award-winning images with detailed explanations from the photographers.
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The Prix Pictet organisation aims to harness the power of photography to draw global attention to issues of environmental sustainability.
The Prix Pictet tours each cycle of the award around the world. This tour is on the theme of fire and is the ninth in their eighteen-month cycle.
The award is recognised as the world’s leading prize for photography with HK$ 850,000 awarded for a body of work that addresses most powerfully the theme of the award.
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The bodies of work shortlisted for Prix Pictet – Fire draw their inspiration from both major global events and personal experiences.
The photographic images span documentary, portraiture, landscape, collage and studies of light and process.
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The winner of Prix Pictet – Fire is the American photographer Sally Mann, who was presented with the award in December 2021 at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum for her series Blackwater (2008-2012).
Sally Mann, Blackwater 13, 2008-2012. From the series: Blackwater, 2008-2012
© Sally Mann, Gagosian, Prix Pictet. Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian
Blackwater (2008-2012) is a multifaceted exploration of the devastating wildfires that enveloped the Great Dismal Swamp in south-eastern Virginia, where the first slave ships docked in America.
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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.”
Millions in the spotlight
Brent Stirton photographed ten-year-old Ragini Kumari in 2013. She was badly burnt by a kerosene fire when she was two years old.
Brent Stirton, 2013. From the series: Burns Capital Of The World, 2013 © Brent Stirton, Getty Images, Prix Pictet. Courtesy of the artist and Getty images
Over six million people are burnt like this in India every year, the highest in the world. Ragini has suffered constrictions of her neck and shoulders and has lived in a permanently cramped and restricted position ever since.
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Her family is deeply impoverished, and like millions of India’s poor, she has been unable to secure the necessary surgery.
Renowned plastic surgeon to the poor, Dr Subodh Singh, found Ragini at a burns camp he held in her area and arranged for her to attend his clinic where he performs free surgery for the poorest of the poor in India. She is seen at her home before surgery.
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Fabrice Monteiro’s photos bring attention to the approximately 40,000 Hectares of forests appearing every year in Senegal.
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In rural areas, only sixteen per cent of households have electricity which has led to further pressure on wood resources. The result has been deforestation, soil erosion and desertification.
Largest dump in Africa
Monteiro travelled to Agbogbloshie, in the heart of Accra, Ghana, to document the conditions of one of the largest electronic waste dumps in Africa.
Untitled#9, Fabrice Monteiro, 2015. From the series: The Prophecy, 2013 – 2020 © Fabrice Monteiro
In this area, the poorest classes of Accra have been spending years dismantling, recovering, weighing and reselling parts and metals extracted from electronic waste.
Untitled#11, Fabrice Monteiro, 2016. From the series: The Prophecy, 2013 – 2020 © Fabrice Monteiro, ADAGP, Prix Pictet. Courtesy of the artist and ADAGP
The main issue is the burning of electronic cables to extract the copper contained in them. That operation is mostly done by children.
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Mak Remissa’s Left 3 Days photograph series of paper-cut figures silhouetted against wisps of smoke recreate the aftermath of Khmer Rouge atrocities that occurred when he was a child forced to flee Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
My grandmother assisted her sick husband to walk, Mak Remissa, 2014. From the series: Left 3 Days, 2014 © Mak Remissa, Prix Pictet. Courtesy of the artist
They were told by Khmer Rouge they would only need to leave for three days, hence the series title.
Khmer Khmer Rouge soldiers took control Phnom Penh, Mak Remissa, 2014. From the series: Left 3 Days, 2014 © Mak Remissa, Prix Pictet. Courtesy of the artist
Daisuke Yokota series Matter / Burn Out explores the act of reconstructing meaning and value through the act of burning his own masterpiece Matter after its exhibition in China, documenting the process in 4,000 photographs whereby the data was processed, manipulated and revived to form a brand new work.
Daisuke Yokota, Untitled, 2016. From the series: Matter / Burn Out, 2016 © Daisuke Yokota, Prix Pictet. Courtesy of the artist
Christian Marclay is a musician and visual artist. In the 1970s, he pioneered using turntables as musical instruments. More recently he originated a collage of comic book images to create a sound score.
Untitled (Burning I), Christian Marclay, 2020. Image still from the series: Fire, 2020 © Christian Marclay, Fraenkel Gallery, Prix Pictet . Courtesy of the artist, Fraenkel Gallery and White Cube
His artwork is an assemblage of objects, installations, photographs, prints, paintings, films and sound. Untitled (Burning I) is a still shot from a video recording of the burning of one of his collages.
Prix Picket – Fire photographs
Admiring a photograph is a subjective affair. The best photographs are not easily interpreted, as that ambiguity provides the opportunity for the image to rise above its context and touch the viewer directly.
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A clear explanation of meaning removes that ambiguity and the need for any further admiration. But where this doesn’t happen, background commentary has a place.
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Prix Pictet – Fire provides both award-winning photographs and commentaries and so is an admiring opportunity for any curious observer.
Text Martin Wray & Prix Pictet / Photos Prix Pictet
