KATY BARRON: PRIX PICTET EXHIBITION TOUR
Nadav Kander- Chongqing IV (Sunday Picnic) - Series: Yangtze, The Long River, 2006
A private guided tour of the exhibition of this year’s shortlisted photographers for the Prix Pictet – the world’s photography award for environmental sustainability.
Thursday October 8, 7.00pm
Purdy Hicks Gallery
65 Hopton Street
Bankside, London SE1 9GZ (Near Tate Modern)
Cost: £3.50
28 Places
Katy Barron is a freelance curator and art advisor who specialises in working with contemporary photography. She was the curator of photography at Purdy Hicks gallery for the last five years. She takes part in portfolio reviews and mentors a number of young photographers as well as curating contemporary photography exhibitions.
A shortlist of twelve outstanding international photographers, from which one will be selected later this year to receive the Prix Pictet, the world’s photography prize for environmental sustainability, will be shown at Purdy Hicks Gallery in October. The shortlisted artists are:
Darren Almond, UK; Christopher Anderson, Canada; Sammy Baloji, Congo; Edward Burtynsky, Canada; Andreas Gursky, Germany; Naoya Hatakeyama, Japan; Nadav Kander, South Africa; Ed Kashi, USA; Abbas Kowsari, Iran; Yao Lu, China; Edgar Martins, Portugal; and Chris Steele-Perkins, UK.
The Prix Pictet is an annual search for photographs that communicate powerful messages of global environmental significance under a broad theme. This year the theme is ‘earth’. A Mexican garbage dump where people forage to sustain a pitiful existence; the changing landscape and displaced communities of China’s Yangtze River; the devastating impact of oil production in the Niger Delta; and the annual pilgrimage to the desert fronts of the Iran-Iraq war are among the subjects that feature in the work of this year’s shortlisted artists.
The submissions speak of the harmful and often irreversible effects of exploiting the earth’s resources and reflect on the immediate and long-term impact of unsustainable development on communities across the globe.
www.prixpictet.com/2009/view/605
The Tour Experience, by Liz Handy
On Thursday 8th October a group of LIP members met at the Purdy Hicks Gallery near the Tate Modern. We were in for a very special treat. Not only did we see at first hand photographs of 12 artists from 9 different countries. We were also shown round the gallery by the expert photographer and critic Katy Barron.
This was the second year of the Prix Pictet - a photographic competition sponsored by the private bank Pictet & Cie. The subject of their competition is sustainability. Last year the subject was water. This year the subject was earth. Next year the theme will be air. 300 photographers were nominated to submit photographs. An independent jury of 6 judges then shortlisted the 12 artists.
There was no rule as to size of the photographs to be submitted. It was left up to each artist to decide this as well as to decide on their framing and mounting. There was therefore quite a difference between the sizes submitted and the kind of framing treatment. I found this made the exhibition more interesting - as it enabled each artist to come across more individually. The winner of the exhibition was to be announced later in the month by Kofi Annan, the honorary president of Prix Pictet. The winner will be invited to Madagascar and be commissioned to do some work for the UK Charity and NGO Asafady. Asafady’s project there is to help Madagascar with a programme of tree planting and management of their natural forest. In so doing they hope to alleviate poverty among the local people.
I am not going to attempt to do what Katy Barron did so well which was take us round the gallery and give us information about each artist. But instead I will mention two of my favourite photographers in the gallery - Edward Burtynsky and Nadav Kander.
Edward Burtynsky, Iberia Quarries #8
Edward Burtynsky, the photographer from Canada, in my opinion stuck well to his brief. He enabled the viewer to look at a stone quarry in a very different way. The angle he took his photograph from almost looked as if he had hired a helicopter or giant crane to photograph a quarry looking from the top down. The depth of field and clarity of his quarries image series is amazing. The stone itself has so many tones its almost like a painting. It invites you to look thoroughly at all the details - and educates you to think more deeply about a quarry. To think about how this beautiful natural product of stone is being carved out of the ground and how when it is quarried leaves a great void at the bottom. Let me quote from Burtysnsky exhibition notes:
“The concept of the landscape as architecture has become for me, an act of imagination”, and he goes on to write: “Photographing quarries was a deliberate act of going out to try to find something in the world that would match the kinds of forms that were in my imagination but unseen in real life - the idea of inverted skyscrapers”.
How refreshing I thought for each photographer to have the space in the catalogue to explain in detail what he was doing and where he comes from. (I say 'he' because all 12 photographers were men!)
Nadav Kander, Chongqing XI
The second photographer who really struck me was Nadav Kander. He is British and was born in Tel Aviv but grew up in Johannesburg. Here he has a photograph series Yangtze, the Long River. His photograph invites you in - and encourages you to look closely and discerningly. Kander writes in his notes:
“The scale of the development has left most places unrecognizable. China’s landscape is changing daily both economically and physically. These are photographs that can never be taken again”.
Kander has used the Yangtze river as a way of explaining how this change is happening. And he has photographed people along its banks from the mouth to its source. Here you see humans by the banks of the river but dwarfed by their surroundings of a man made world of cranes and bridges and misty pollution. The photograph at first seems beautiful as the mist of pollution gives a subtle soft light, it could even be a traditional Chinese landscape picture. It is only on looking more closely that one realizes what the cause is of this soft light. China, like so much of the industrial world, is changing the landscape which has been unchanged for so long. One wonders how long the men with their fishing rods will be able to catch any fish.
This photograph reminded me of the Australian painter Jeffrey Smart who paints rather bleak modern landscapes with small people being overwhelmed by their man made surroundings of motor ways or car parks. Man stands alone and alienated in a world that seems to be changing around him.
What is encouraging about the theme of the Prix Pictet is that it gives photographers a chance to explain to the public what is happening in the world - and the prize of the competition in itself is an attempt to create some measure of sustainability.
Nadav Kander was the winner, and you can read more about the award presentation and Azafady at this link.