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Vision
Food riots. Loss of forest cover. Desertification. The ecosystems we depend on appear to face resource demands already beyond their capacity. As governments try urgently to stimulate growth, a central question remains - can the earth’s complex living systems sustain the future consumption patterns of another three billion people in the world’s population by 2050?
Or are we making the transition, as the Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen has suggested, to a point where the face of the earth – its soil, its waters, its groves, its hollows – is no longer natural, but bears the terminal scars of man’s intervention?
Impurity, excess, contamination, absence, control: these were the aspects of sustainability on the theme of Water covered by photographers nominated for the inaugural Prix Pictet. This second theme was Earth.
Sponsored by the Geneva-based private bank Pictet & Cie, the Prix Pictet is the world’s first prize dedicated to photography and sustainability. It has a unique mandate – to use the power of photography to communicate crucial messages to a global audience; and it has a unique goal – art of the highest order, applied to the immense social and environmental threats of the new millennium.
As Kofi Annan, the Prix Pictet’s Honorary President, said, in awarding the 2008 Prix Pictet to the Canadian photographer Benoit Aquin, “It is my hope that the Prix Pictet will help to deepen understanding of the changes taking place in our world and raise public awareness about the urgency of taking preventative action. The images submitted for the Prix Pictet confront us with the scale of the threat we face and they act to inspire governments, businesses – and all of us as individuals – to step up to the challenge and support change for a sustainable world.”
Entry to the Prix Pictet is by nomination. More than seventy nominators from five continents have searched for the series of images that, in the opinion of the independent jury, have the power and artistic quality demanded by the Prix Pictet.
The 2009 Shortlist was announced at the Rencontres d'Arles festival on 9 July 2009 and the winner of this year’s CHF100,000 Prix Pictet, Nadav Kander, was announced in Paris on 22 October 2009. At the same time Ed Kashi was invited to complete the 2009 Commission to produce a series of photographs that highlight many of the issues threatening Madagascar.
