SHANGHAI.- The Prix Pictet presents its Human cycle in a comprehensive exhibition featuring 12 leading shortlisted photographers at Fotografiska Shanghai from 17 January to 9 March 2025.

Prix Pictet’s Focus on Environmental Issues

The Prix Pictet was founded in 2008 by the Pictet Group with the goal of harnessing the power of photography to draw attention to the critical issue of global sustainability. To date, there have been ten cycles of the award, each with its own theme highlighting a particular facet of sustainability. The nine themes are Water, Earth, Growth, Power, Consumption, Disorder, Space, Hope and Fire.

The Human Exhibition at Fotografiska

Following the successful exhibition in Beijing this May, the Prix Pictet is delighted to present a full-scale exhibition of its Human cycle at Fotografiska Shanghai, returning to the city after showcasing its Hope exhibition in 2021. The exhibition at Fotografiska Shanghai will showcase the work of twelve outstanding photographers shortlisted for the tenth cycle of the award. Each of their series constitutes a powerful exploration of the various facets of the theme Human. In their own unique way, each photographer explores our shared humanity and the vast spectrum of our interactions with the world.

The shortlisted portfolios span documentary, portraiture, landscape, and studies of light and process, and explore issues ranging from the plight of indigenous peoples, conflict, childhood, the collapse of economic processes, to the traces of human habitation and industrial development, gang violence, border lands, and migration.

The shortlisted photographers are:

Hoda Afshar, Iran • Gera Artemova, Ukraine • Ragnar Axelsson, Iceland • Alessandro Cinque, Italy/Peru • Siân Davey, UK • Gauri Gill, India • Michał Łuczak, Poland • Yael Martínez, Mexico • Richard Renaldi, US • Federico Ríos Escobar, Colombia • Vanessa Winship, UK/Bulgaria • Vasantha Yogananthan, France

At a ceremony at the Victoria & Albert Museum (the first stop of the international tour), in September 2023 Indian photographer Gauri Gill was announced as the winner of the Prix Pictet Human. Gill’s work emphasises her belief in working with and through community, in what she calls ‘active listening’. For more than two decades, she has been closely engaged with communities in the desert of western Rajasthan, Northern India and for the last decade with Indigenous artists in Maharashtra.

At the close of the exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Colombian photographer Federico Ríos Escobar was also announced as the winner of the inaugural Prix Pictet People's Choice Award. Ríos Escobar's poignant work captures the heart-wrenching realities of South American children whose parents have embarked on the perilous migrant journey through the treacherous Darién Gap, a near-impassable stretch of jungle on the Colombia-Panama border. The People's Choice Award was introduced to allow the public to vote for their favourite shortlisted series and to create further dialogue around the vital issues the Prix Pictet explores.

For more than 40 years Ragnar Axelsson has charted the dramatic changes in the lives of the indigenous people, landscapes and environments on the fringes of the habitable world. A concern for the lives and disappearing homelands of the indigenous people of the Andes mountains informs the work of Alessandro Cinque. Gauri Gill spent more than two decades photographing the joy, pain and tenderness woven into the fabric of some of those who eke out a living in the remote desert region of Rajasthan, India. Federico Ríos Escobar provides agonised glimpses of South American children whose parents have elected to join the hazardous migrant voyage through the almost impassable stretch of jungle on the Colombia–Panama border known as the Darién Gap. Michał Łuczak documents the indelible marks the once-great mining industry has left on the landscape of Upper Silesia, Poland. Gera Artemova’s visual diary opens with deeply personal experiences that delve into the intrinsic value of life and the relentless pursuit of normalcy in face of tragedies. Vasantha Yogananthan’s work is filled with the dreams and despair of the post-Hurricane Katrina generation of children in New Orleans, USA. Vanessa Winship creates carefully composed portraits of schoolgirls from the Turkish borderlands. The strange, otherworldly Iranian islands of Hormuz, Qeshm and Hengam are the touchstone for Hoda Afshar’s work. Yael Martínez’s pierced photographs were made in the wake of the disappearance of family members, victims of the violence that is part of daily life in the Mexican state of Guerrero. Richard Renaldi and Siân Davey both focus on the garden as a place of hope and reconnection in their work, a place that serves both as a metaphor for the human heart and a potential source of harmony.