Prix Pictet 2014 - Consumption

20 November – 2 December 2014

The exhibition features the work of the eleven shortlisted photographers within the fifth cycle of Prix Pictet.

Earlier this year at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Kofi Annan, Honorary President of Prix Pictet, announced that the German photographer Michael Schmidt had won Prix Pictet Consumption for Lebensmittel his monumental survey of the food industry. The exhibition then toured to Barcelona and Thessaloniki and will visit Turin, Zurich, Munich and Mexico later this year.

The prize was founded in 2008 by Pictet, a Swiss asset and wealth management group established in 1805. Prix Pictet has gained global recognition for showcasing leading photographers’ contribution to the debate about the most pressing social and environmental challenges today. Since its inception, nearly 70 of the world’s leading photographers have been shortlisted for the Prix Pictet. The four previous laureates were Benoît Aquin, Nadav Kander, Mitch Epstein and Luc Delahaye. On 12 November the sixth theme of Prix Pictet was revealed as Disorder. The announcement was made at a reception at the Musée d’Art Moderne de La Ville de Paris, during the annual Paris Photo photography fair.

This year’s Shortlist of eleven photographers featured
Adam Bartos (United States)
Motoyuki Daifu (Japan)
Rineke Dijkstra (Netherlands)
Hong Hao (China)
Mishka Henner (Belgium)
Juan Fernando Herrán (Colombia)
Boris Mikhailov (Ukraine)
Abraham Oghobase (Nigeria)
Allan Sekula (United States)
Laurie Simmons (United States)
and winner
Michael Schmidt (Germany)

Sadly Michael Schmidt died on 24 May, just three days after having won the Prix Pictet, his first international award. Luc Delahaye, the fourth laureate of the Prix Pictet and member of the Jury, paid tribute to Schmidt’s genius, remarking, "With Lebensmittel, Michael Schmidt shows us how people, animals and nature are exploited in the agro-business. Exploitation is a feature of capitalism and the photographs, in their brutality, only show the brutality of a situation, the absurdity of the fact and the alienation that it produces. They can be taken just as they are or as the illustration of the many other things that are going wrong in our society. They’re a dark tale about the modern world. What’s important is that Schmidt does not accuse, he simply reveals, and the interpretation is left to the viewer. He can do so because he has confidence in the power of his medium and confidence in the intelligence of the viewer ... As a photographer I’d like to say that he is doing the kind of work that helps us to keep faith in our profession."

More information: www.prixpictet.com

The Prix Pictet has two elements: the prize of 100,000 Swiss Francs, which this year was awarded to Michael Schmidt, and the Commission, for which a shortlisted photographer is funded to develop a proposal for a field trip to a location where Pictet is supporting a major sustainability project on the theme of the main award, Consumption.

The Jury for the fifth cycle of the Prix Pictet:
Professor Sir David King, Chairman, UK Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative for Climate Change
Peter Aspden, Arts Writer, Financial Times
Luc Delahaye, Photographer & Laureate, Prix Pictet laureat "Power"
Fumio Nanjo, Director, Mori Art Museum
Loa Haagen, Pictet Art Consultant & Curator
Martin Barnes, Senior Curator of Photographs, V&A
Wang Shu, Architect
Elisabeth Sussman, Curator and Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography, Whitney Museum of American Art

The Consumption book, produced by the German publishing group teNeues, contains the portfolios of the eleven shortlisted artists and a selection of work from other nominees who submitted images corresponding to the theme.

The Sixth Prix Pictet theme is Disorder. The announcement was made at a reception at the Musée d’Art Moderne de La Ville de Paris, during the annual Paris Photo photography fair.