Prix Pictet, the global award in photography and sustainability has announced their 2015 shortlist on Friday. The finalists for this sixth competition were revealed at a screening at Les Rencontres d’Arles by the Prix Pictet Chairman, Stephen Barber.
The shortlist features work by 12 artists from 7 countries on 4 continents. In making their selection, the independent jury, chaired by Sir David King, praised the outstanding quality of the portfolios under review.
The full shortlist is as follows; Ilit Azoulay (Israel), Valérie Belin (France), Matthew Brandt (USA), Maxim Dondyuk (Ukraine), Alixandra Fazzina (UK), Ori Gersht (Israel), John Gossage (USA), Pieter Hugo (South Africa), Gideon Mendel (South Africa), Sophie Ristelhueber (France), Brent Stirton (South Africa) and Yang Yongliang (China).
The winner of the sixth Prix Pictet award will be announced by Kofi Annan at Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris on Thursday 12 November 2015.
Prix Pictet Disorder will then embark on a world tour beginning with scheduled exhibitions in Rome and Geneva, followed by planned shows in Shanghai, Barcelona, Lagos, Moscow, Brussels, Berlin and New York.
The work from the shortlisted artists, together with outstanding images from the wider selection will appear in the book Disorder, to be published by teNeues in November. The portfolios of the shortlisted artists can be viewed at www.prixpictet.com/portfolios
Ilit Azoulay – Series: Imaginary Order
Ilit Azoulay was born in Jaffa in 1972 and lives and works in Tel Aviv-Jaffa. She received her BFA (1998) and MFA (2010) from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem. Her works have been featured in solo exhibitions in Kunst Werke Berlin (2014) and Herzeliya Museum of Contemporary Art (2014), and in 2014 she was nominated for the Rencontres d’Arles Discovery Award. Her works are held in numerous museum collections, including Centre Pompidou, Paris; Podesta Collection, Washington; The Israel Museum Jerusalem; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; and the Herzeliya Museum of Contemporary Art. Recent publications are Finally Without End, an artist monograph (Sternberg Press, Berlin) and Shifting Degrees of Certainty, following her exhibition at Kunst Werke (Spector Books, Leipzig).
Valérie Belin – Still Life
Valérie Belin lives and works in Paris. She trained at the École Nationale Superieure d’Art de Bourges from 1983 to 1988, and then went on to study the philosophy of art at the Université Panthéon-Sorbonne in Paris, where she was awarded a Diplôme d’Études Approfondies in 1989. Her work has been shown in exhibitions in international venues including the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015), PHI Center, Montreal, Quebec (2014), Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow (2013) and Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York (2013). Her work has appeared in several group exhibitions including A World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2014). Amongst the collections that have acquired her work are the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Maison européenne de la photographie, Paris; The Museum of Modern Art, New York and the National Museum of Contemporary Art Korea, Seoul.
Matthew Brandt – Honeybees
Born in 1982, Matthew Brandt obtained his MFA from UCLA in Los Angeles in 2008, where he still lives and works. His solo exhibition Matthew Brandt: Sticky/Dusty/Wet was exhibited at Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art in 2014 and previously Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio in 2013. He has also had solo shows at galleries including Yossi Milo Gallery, New York (2014, 2012), Galerie Praz-Delavallade, Paris (2014) and M+B Gallery, Los Angeles (2013). Brandt has been featured in group surveys including Light Paper, Process: Reinventing Photography, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (2015) and What is a Photograph?, International Center of Photography, New York (2014) and Land Marks, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2013). His work is held in the collections of The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, among others.
Maxim Dondyuk – Culture of the Confrontation
Maxim Dondyuk, born in Ukraine in 1983, is a freelance documentary photographer who has worked on creating and promoting his own documentary projects since 2010, having previously worked as a photojournalist for the Ukrainian media. In 2011 Maxim undertook the Noor-Nikon Masterclass in Documentary Photography in Bucharest. He was named as one of Magnum Photos’ ‘30 under 30’ emerging documentary photographers, is the winner of the Ville de Perpignan Remi Ochlik Award and finalist of both the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography and the FotoEvidence Book Award. Maxim collaborates with many international editions and online media. His photos have been published in TIME, Der Spiegel, STERN, Paris Match, Rolling Stone, Bloomberg Businessweek, Russian Reporter and Libération, among others. He also works in cooperation with international organisations, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the World Health Organization (WHO).
Alixandra Fazzina – A Million Shillings – Escape from Somalia
Alixandra Fazzina, born in the UK in 1974, focuses with her photography on under-reported conflicts and the often forgotten humanitarian consequences of war. She began her career as a war artist in Bosnia while studying fine art. Since then, she has worked independently as a photojournalist throughout Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Her reportages have been widely published in the British and international press and her photographs exhibited worldwide. Fazzina was a finalist in the CARE Award for Humanitarian Reportage and the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography in 2008 for her work in Somalia. That same year, she received the Vic Odden Award from the British Royal Photographic Society. She has also been recognised as the winner of the highly prestigious UNHCR Nansen Refugee Award (2010).
Ori Gersht – Blow Up
Born in Tel Aviv in 1967, Ori Gersht has lived and worked in London for the last 24 years, having obtained his MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art in 1995. He is Professor of Photography at the University for the Creative Arts. His solo exhibitions include History Repeats, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2012); This Storm Is What We Call Progress, Imperial War Museum, London (2012); and Lost in Time, Santa Barbara Museum, California (2011). His work has been featured in group shows including Seduced by Art: Photography Past and Present, National Gallery, London (2012), Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance, Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010) and In Focus: Still Life, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California (2010). His work is held in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Modern Art; Tate Gallery, London; Victoria & Albert Museum, London and the Tel Aviv Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel.
John Gossage – Should Nature Change
John Gossage was born in New York in 1946 and is based in Washington DC. His photographs have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions over the past four decades, recently including Berlin in the Time of the Wall, Gallerie Zulauf, Freinsheim, 2005; The Pond, National Museum of American Art, Washington DC, 2010 and Three Routines, Art Institute of Chicago, 2014. Gossage is regarded as one of the finest American photobook-makers of the last 40 years. His first monograph, The Pond (1985), has just been republished to great acclaim, and other notable works include There and Gone (1997); The Things That Animals Care About (1998); The Secrets of Real Estate (2008); Who Do You Love (2014); Nothing (2014) and pomodori a grappolo (2015). Gossage was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012. His work is represented in major collections including The Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Library of Congress, Washington DC; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Philadelphia Museum of Art; Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra and the Palazzo Fortuny, Venice.
Pieter Hugo – Permanent Error
Pieter Hugo, born in Johannesburg in 1976, is a photographic artist living in Cape Town. Major museum solo exhibitions have taken place at Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Ludwig Museum in Budapest, Fotografiska in Stockholm, MAXXI in Rome and the Institute of Modern Art Brisbane, among others. Hugo has participated in numerous group exhibitions at institutions including Tate Modern (London) and the Folkwang Museum (Essen). His work is represented in prominent public and private collections, among them The Museum of Modern Art New York, Victoria & Albert Museum (London), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles), and the Walther Collection (Germany). Hugo received the Discovery Award at the Rencontres d’Arles Festival in 2008, the Seydou Keïta Award at the Rencontres de Bamako African Photography Biennial in 2011, and was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2012.
Gideon Mendel – Drowning World
Born in Johannesburg in 1959, Gideon Mendel studied Psychology and African History at the University of Cape Town. He began photographing in the 1980s during the final years of apartheid. Mendel has worked for many of the world’s leading magazines including National Geographic, Fortune, Condé Nast Traveller, GEO, The Independent, The Guardian Weekend, Stern and Rolling Stone, as well as projects with campaigning organizations including The Global Fund, Médecins Sans Frontières, Treatment Action Campaign, the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, ActionAid, Shelter and UNICEF. His publications include A Broken Landscape: HIV & AIDS in Africa (2001). Mendel has won accolades including the W. Eugene Smith Award for Humanistic Photography, six World Press Photo Awards and the Amnesty International Media Award for Photojournalism. Drowning World is Mendel’s long-term art and advocacy project about flooding that is his personal response to climate change.
Sophie Ristelhueber – Eleven Blowups
Born in 1949, French artist Sophie Ristelhueber utilises photography to create art works that play with the material and the format of the image, its status, its framework and its installation in space. Her work has been exhibited in numerous international institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; The Power Plant, Toronto; Tate Modern, London and the Imperial War Museum. She has been involved in exhibitions at the Biennial of Johannesburg, Sao Paulo, Triennial of Echigo-Tsumari, Les Rencontres d’Arles, and in Paris, MNAM – Centre Pompidou, Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Musée Zadkine and Musée Rodin.
Brent Stirton – A Violation of Eden
Brent Stirton is a South African photographer whose work has been published by National Geographic Magazine, Time Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, GEO, Newsweek, CNN, The Sunday Times Magazine UK, Le Figaro, amongst other respected titles. He works with organisations including the Global Business Coalition against Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the World Wide Fund for Nature and Human Rights Watch. Stirton has received multiple awards from bodies including the Unicef Photographic Awards and the Sony World Photography Award. He has won the Wildlife Photojournalist of the year award from the Natural History Museum (London) on two occasions, and the National Magazine Award for his work in the Congo for National Geographic Magazine.
Yang Yongliang – Artificial Wonderland
Born in 1980 in Shanghai, Yang Yongliang graduated with a major in visual communication from China Academy of Art in 1999. He began experimenting with contemporary art in 2005, using varied media in his practice including photography, painting, video and installation. Yang’s work has been exhibited at Moscow Biennale, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing) and National Gallery of Victoria among others and is collected by public institutes such as the British Museum, London, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Yang Yongliang uses images of architecture as his brushstrokes in Artificial Wonderland. These tremendously detailed landscapes reference Song Dynasty landscape painting, but the heavy mountains are in fact contoured with images of urban development.
Photo: Alixandra Fazzina A Million Shillings – Escape from Somalia