The Prix Pictet is a prestigious photography award presented by The Pictet Group, focused on photographic series that highlight environmentalism and sustainability.
Since its inception in 2008, the prize has gone through ten cycles centring around a one-word theme. With hundreds of nominations each year, the final exhibition features a shortlist of artists and one overall winner, showcasing leading photography talent from across the globe.
From March 1st the Prix Pictet’s current cycle, Human, will be exhibited at Photo Museum Ireland in the heart of Temple Bar. This will be the ninth year the museum has featured the Prix Pictet collections.
“It’s a real honour for us to be involved with a prize of this scope and prestige because it features such a high level of work, but also because it is such a well-intentioned and such a well-considered prize,” Darren Campion, curator at Photo Museum Ireland, tells Totally Dublin. “It’s dealing with really internationally pressing issues, and it is, itself, a global prize. It’s something we look forward to every time it comes around.”
With each cycle, Pictet work closely with the museum to ensure visitors enjoy the most impactful experience with the collection. Darren says, “We have shown very big works from Pictet, but they are mindful of what they send us, that it is appropriate for the space, and they work with us to curate and to design the installation of the exhibition. We’ve done that for the last couple of years with them, in a very collaborative way, and they’re great to work with.”
Focusing on this cycle’s theme, Darren says, “It’s really drawing on this theme of the human to show connections across borders, across countries, and across nations, to show what degree of common humanity there is between people and the requirement for common solutions and common means of addressing these climate issues that we’re facing.
“There really is a call to action across borders and nations. It reflects the global scale of the prize but, also, the global nature of the issues we’re facing that affect everybody, to some degree.”
The photographs in this cycle display a range in topography, grandness, density, figures, countries, cultures, mood, staging, blocking, weather, colour, and saturation. “We’re dealing with the very dramatic and visible effects of climate change, where action is required, but also, it’s bringing it down to the immediate and the mundane,” Darren says of how this variation compliments the theme.
“It’s showing this whole spectrum of points where this idea of sustainability can be leveraged and brought into being. It is a common humanity across all the work, and it can exist in all these different kinds of registers on different levels.
“There’s a really wide spectrum of economic circumstances shown in the work, and that is a really important part of the prize, as well, I think, is its scope and its reach and that it can show these different registers.”
Darren feels that the collection offers hope within the dire nature of the subject matter. “There’s this sense of, ‘Yes, we are facing these potentially terrible changes, but there’s also an opportunity for us to come together and advance our human connections and to see what we can do together in light of the challenges that we’re facing,’” he says.
“So, the collection is hopeful, and I think Pictet are very conscious of not just offering problems, because the keyword here is ‘Sustainability.’ It’s climate action. It’s solutions, as well.”
“But often it is challenging work; it is dark or dealing with really dark subjects. It is that, but there are works, like Siân Davey’s, which are very intimate and very hopeful and personal.”
With the plethora of images on display, the museum encourages visitors to return and have several engagements with the collection. “Even for ourselves, there are things you don’t always notice because there are a lot of works, and there are a lot of layers to the works, so we always recommend a couple of visits to a show,” Darren says.
Another benefit of revisits is that the art could take on more poignancy or relevancy as the world changes in the seven weeks that the exhibition will be on display. Since the Human cycle’s collection was selected in 2022, climate change’s relevancy has not waned, and arbitrary weather phenomena can change the context oin which the exhibition is viewed.
“Particularly with the things that are in the news now, with climate internationally, the background is constantly changing – and it’s true of any artistic work I suppose; the world is changing around it – so, you’re always reading it in relation to the world,” Darren says.
“As the world changes, your reading of the work shifts, as well. It’s always relevant in one way or another. Even if a specific subject has passed out of the headlines, the issues are still there, and the issues are still advancing or changing in the background.”
Words: Aaron Kavanagh
Feature Image: Yael Martínez
Prix Pictet: Human will be exhibited at the Photo Museum Ireland until April 20th.
See photomuseumireland.ie for more information.
