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A Photography Prize That Shows the World as It Is, and Hopes to Change It

Nadav Kander, “Chongqing XI” from the series “Yangtze, The Long River” (2006-7). Mr. Kander won the Prix Pictet, a prize for photography that explores themes of sustainability, in 2009.Credit...Nadav Kander/Prix Pictet

ARLES, France — On a huge cinema screen that has been erected in the Roman amphitheater here, the photographs slid past. The vast Yangtze River in China, looking toxic in the morning mist, a factory chimney on the bank sending a curl of smoke into the sky. The broken asphalt surface of an Iraqi highway, shattered by a roadside bomb. The dead body of a baby albatross, its stomach cut open to reveal the diet of plastic waste that killed it. Nearly all depicted some appalling crisis; nearly all were arrestingly beautiful. As the slide show finished, there was appreciative applause.

The event on Thursday was to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Prix Pictet award, a highlight of the annual Rencontre d’Arles photography festival. The prize is a curious combination of incongruities: It is one of photography’s richest, awarding 100,000 Swiss francs (about $101,000), provided by Pictet, a private Swiss bank; and it puts a spotlight on environmental sustainability, an issue not always associated with wealthy financiers. As photographers have become increasingly fascinated by conceptualism, the award champions the unfashionable notion that photography’s primary duty is to show the world as it is — and, if possible, to change it.

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Nadav Kander, “Chongqing Municipality, 2006,” from the series “Yangtze, The Long River” (2006-7).Credit...Nadav Kander/Prix Pictet
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At left, Chris Jordan’s “Midway, CF000313, 2009” from the series “Midway: Message from the Gyre” (2009). Right, Sophie Ristelhueber’s “Eleven Blowups #1” from the series “Eleven Blowups” (2006).Credit...Chris Jordan/Prix Pictet; Sophie Riestelhueber/Prix Pictet

Browsing the exhibition on a sweltering afternoon, Stephen Barber, a partner at Pictet who established the prize in 2008, seemed mildly surprised that they had all got away with it. “It’s evolved in ways we couldn’t have expected or predicted,” he said.

Did he see the award’s purpose as art or activism? “Both,” he said. “Or perhaps neither.”

Run on a roughly 18-month cycle (there have been seven winners in ten years), the prize’s inner workings are famously labyrinthine. First, the organizers announce a theme connected to sustainability — previous themes have included “Water,” “Earth,” “Consumption,” “Disorder” and “Space” — after which a pool of over 300 nominators including curators, gallerists, journalists and other experts recommends a longlist that often numbers over 600 photographers. This is whittled down to a shortlist of around 10. After a year or so, the winner is finally announced, and selected work goes on a worldwide tour.

In the last 10 years, work from the Prix Pictet has been exhibited in 40 cities and seen by 400 million people, the organizers estimate, including a sizable audience online. In Mexico City this year, 86,000 people visited the exhibition of the latest installment, they said.

Although some of the grandest names in photography have been shortlisted, among them Edward Burtynsky, Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth, the judges have generally surprised critics by choosing more left-field winners. The first was the little-known Canadian photographer Benoit Aquin, who triumphed with a series of surreal, unearthly images of dust storms in China. Four years later, it was Luc Delahaye, a photojournalist who has renounced documentary work to make images that explore the boundary between war reporting and landscape art.

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Luc Delahaye, “Man Sleeping, Dubai” (2008).Credit...Luc Delahaye/Prix Pictet
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Luc Delahaye, “132nd Ordinary Meeting of the Conference” (2004).Credit...Luc Delahaye/Prix Pictet

Mr. Aquin acknowledged that when he found out he was on the Prix Pictet shortlist, he was unsure what to make of it. “I thought at first it was some kind of fraud — you know, one where they ask for your bank details,” he said in an interview on the forecourt of a former auto repair shop where the anniversary exhibition has been installed. “And I was even more surprised to win. But it was a tremendous honor. And the pictures I made have gone everywhere. People still want to use and show them, even 10 years on: They have taken on a life of their own.”

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Benoit Aquin, “Shepherd in Wuwei” (2006) from the series “The Chinese Dust Bowl” (2006-7).Credit...Benoit Aquin/Prix Pictet
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Benoit Aquin, “Untitled 03” from the series “The Chinese Dust Bowl” (2006-7).Credit...Benoit Aquin/Prix Pictet

Mr. Aquin said he had become fascinated by dust storms after being stranded in one in Mongolia in 2002. Researching the phenomenon, he learned that more than a quarter of China’s landmass is now desert, a figure that is increasing because of over-farming. His photographs, which were made in 2007, are imposingly large, portraying vast landscapes cloaked in choking orange dust. They look like warning messages from another planet — or perhaps a post-apocalyptic future.

Did he feel that he had helped make viewers more aware of desertification, which many environmentalists fear is on the increase globally? “If one person is inspired, I’m satisfied,” he said.

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Richard Mosse, “Tempelhof Interior,” from the series “Heat Maps” (2016-7).Credit...Richard Mosse/Jack Shainman Gallery

Though the prize aims to tackle headline issues — 2017’s winner was the Irish photographer Richard Mosse, who won with images of migrant trails and refugee camps taken with a military-grade heat-map camera — not all the work it has showcased is epic. The victor two years earlier was the artist Valérie Belin, who illustrated the overuse of plastic with a droll series of still lives that reference 17th-century Dutch painting. These hectic, junk-store jumbles of plastic objects — a mannequin’s head, twists of wire, artificial flowers, children’s toys — find delight in artifacts that most throw in the trash without a second thought.

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Valérie Belin, “Still Life With Mirror,” from the series “Still Life” (2014).Credit...Valérie Belin/Prix Pictet
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Valérie Belin, “Still Life With Shoes,” from the series “Still Life” (2014).Credit...Valérie Belin/Prix Pictet

In an interview, Ms. Belin said she hoped that what she had created had made a difference, highlighting the dangers of plastic pollution. “I hope that people feel they have the incentive to change,” she said. “Otherwise, why would you look? We need art to help with this.”

The Prix Pictet is not without its critics, who argue that its themes are so broad, and the photographs so diverse, that it is hard to see its genuine purpose. “It’s true that all the work is very different,” Ms. Belin said. “But, looking at the exhibition again today, I thought, they’re not so different, finally. We are interested in the same things.”

Sam Stourdzé, the director of the Arles festival, said that whatever the debate about the Prix Pictet’s form or ambitions, the thing that mattered was the quality and depth of the photographs. “There is a lot of photographic work looking at the world; the Prix Pictet celebrates that,” he said. “You don’t have to be a photojournalist to care about what is happening.”

A few minutes after the slide show on Thursday finished, the lights in the amphitheater dimmed and the prize’s latest theme was announced: “Hope.” A change in direction from previous editions, more calculatedly optimistic, it seemed like a response to the anxiety that has gripped the environmental movement, as global temperatures continue to increase, plastics pour into the world’s oceans and nations struggle to agree on a way to combat climate change. Work responding to the theme will be sought over the next 12 months, and will go on show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in fall 2019.

“Perhaps it’s unexpected,” Mr. Barber said of the theme. “But we felt like we could do with a little hope right now.”

A correction was made on 
July 6, 2018

A caption with an earlier version of this article was published in error. The caption, for Benoit Aquin’s “Shepherd in Wuwei,” repeated one for his “Untitled 03.”

How we handle corrections

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