confinement confinement

d Contents

2 Foreword – Renaud de Planta 4 Preface – Stephen Barber and Michael Benson 6 Essay – Peter Frankopan 10 Essay – Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

13–100 Photographs 14 Ross McDonnell 58 Margaret Courtney-Clarke 16 Ilit Azoulay 60 Chris Steele-Perkins 18 Saskia Groneberg 62 Nadav Kander 20 Philippe Chancel 64 Nyaba Léon Ouedraogo 22 Shahidul Alam 66 Edgar Martins 24 Gideon Mendel 68 An-My Lê 26 Ori Gersht 70 Maxim Dondyuk 28 Reza Deghati 72 Susan Derges 30 Ed Kashi 74 Joana Choumali 32 Chris Jordan 76 Janelle Lynch 34 Naoya Hatakeyama 78 Edmund Clark 36 Stéphane Couturier 80 Mandy Barker 38 Matthew Brandt 82 Awoiska van der Molen 40 Robin Rhode 84 Mary Mattingly 42 Sohei Nishino 86 Edward Burtynsky 44 Rena Effendi 88 Abbas Kowsari 46 Joel Sternfeld 90 Alexia Webster 48 Benoit Aquin 92 Richard Mosse 50 Laurie Simmons 94 Valérie Belin 52 Brent Stirton 96 Pavel Wolberg 54 Motoyuki Daifu 98 Rinko Kawauchi 56 Munem Wasif

101–106 Artist Statements

107 Prix Pictet 108 Advisory Board 109 The Jury Process 110 Acknowledgments Foreword

the purpose of the Prix Pictet, to quote Gro Harlem Brundtland at its launch in 2008, is ‘to ensure that matters of sustainability remain at the forefront of global debate, where they need to belong’. In the twelve years since, the two greatest threats to life on the planet – excess resource depletion and damaging climate change – have only intensified. The Prix Pictet has documented the growing sustainability crisis in images raw and beautiful from across the world. In doing so it has become one of a handful of leading global prizes for any type or genre of photography. The smartphone revolution has made photography a medium of communication used and understood by all. It’s a medium that transcends language in its power to communicate, which magnifies the potential of the Prix Pictet to influence government, business and society throughout the world. In our own field, a growing belief is taking hold among investors that environmental, social and governance risks are tangible threats to unreformed investment portfolios. Asset and wealth managers such as ourselves realise that our actions on behalf of our clients can be an enormous force for good, by changing the behaviour of the companies we invest in for the better. This book is published in a year that will forever be imprinted in our memories as the year of the Covid-19 pandemic; of lockdown, of confinement – changing the way we work and live in what Peter Frankopan describes in his opening essay as ‘the largest social science experiment in history’. Some changes will be permanent, others will fade with time. Perhaps, in the brief interlude of clean city air and clear skies, we have learnt something about our impact on our planet. Nor should we forget that the year has also amplified economic inequalities within societies and between nations, with lasting effects. Here, in their own compelling images and words, 43 of the more than 90 past shortlisted Prix Pictet photographers give us their personal response to the Covid-19 crisis.

Renaud de Planta On behalf of the Managing Partners

3 Preface

within days of the first lockdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic, it became clear that it would be months before the Prix Pictet would be able to exhibit ‘in real life’ again. So we asked a young designer, Gabriel Stones, to create an online walk-through of the November 2019 Victoria and Albert Museum Hope exhibition. This initiative helped both to sustain the momentum of the stalled tour, and to open up the exhibition to a global audience that could not otherwise have seen the show. But it was not enough. By this time news and social media had become saturated with images of deserted cityscapes, overflowing hospitals and returning wildlife. We decided, in a commission project with Fiona Shields, The Guardian’s director of photography, to harness the ability of the Prix Pictet’s shortlisted artists to move beyond these emerging clichés and point to a way forward. This commission was the motivating force behind this book. Each of the artists – Nadav Kander (Earth), Alexia Webster (Hope), Rena Effendi (Hope and Power) and Rinko Kawauchi (Space) – touched on themes of isolation, confinement and resource consumption. As Rena Effendi notes, ‘I set out to portray the city in crisis and confinement, but what I found was a diverse social fabric where pockets of hope and human resilience prevail’. Nadav Kander writes here, ‘This event is willing us human beings collectively to move towards balancing our indiscriminate use of nature’s resources. This is not a warped reality; it is just reality and it comes from man being out of balance with nature.’ These four artists had been working out their creative response to the crisis well before the Guardian project. We therefore issued exactly the same challenge to all 88 living photographers shortlisted for the eight cycles of the Prix Pictet to date. The result is an extraordinarily rich repertoire of images by 43 photographers, including these four Guardian projects. Also, on pages 102–106, are detailed, poignant and often moving artists’ statements which repay careful study. Some, such as An-My Lê’s Hospital Ship sailing serenely beneath the arches of the Verrazzano- Narrows Bridge in New York or Sohei Nishino’s shadowy moorings, give up their secrets slowly. Others, like Ross McDonnell’s masked mannequins or Chris Steele-Perkins’ anguished self-portrait, are more visceral. Here is a series of images that both respond to the issues that confront us today and begin to plot a route through to a new future and to new ways of thinking about the world.

Stephen Barber Michael Benson Chairman, Prix Pictet Director, Prix Pictet

4 5 The year the Earth stood still Peter Frankopan

In the ancient world, few bothered meaningful ways. And then there are those with with dates. The way people whom we can seem to have nothing in common and yet from whom we sometimes learn most as a result. thought and talked about the We live in a world that is complex, challenging and past was by linking to events that where each of us is unique. And yet we are all sailing through time as fellow travellers, witnessing and affected the whole community – reacting to the same events while experiencing our a battle, perhaps; or the murder own triumphs and setbacks, our own successes and challenges, our own relief and pain. The thing that Abbas Kowsari of a ruler. Extreme weather events, is so interesting about our species is our ability to learn Cleric volunteers bury the body of a COVID-19 victim on 10 April 2020, in Abjer Village near Qaem Shahr, Iran like major rivers freezing over, from, to empathise with and to try to understand each other. So the events of 2020 have challenged or natural disasters, such as what it means to be human. that we gathered in the present but form the basis Yet the ideas about lockdown, about being isolated volcanic eruptions or earthquakes of how we remember the past. A world where we and about time standing still were not shared by could visit exhibitions and see original artworks all. The wealthy countries of the West had different were central points of reference And so here we are in 2020: the year the Earth stood with our own eyes. choices available to them to those with low and to explain when other incidents still. It did not stand still for everybody. But it stood still Instead, we have been left with a series of blank middle incomes. The developed world deployed for hundreds of millions – indeed billions of people. canvases, with the dull passing of time as the emergency financial parachutes to stabilise and save took place: at the same time; just Countries went into lockdown, with citizens being grains of sand have fallen slowly and relentlessly their economies – keeping businesses afloat, paying before or after. And of course what allowed out of their homes in specific circumstances, through the hourglass. One day blended blankly workers to stay at home and providing jaw-dropping often requiring permission and paperwork. into the next. Routines were established, and then amounts of credit to the banking system. mattered most to each individual International travel came to an end. The way we took hold and became like ruts in a well-travelled The United States alone committed to a package were their own personal milestones. worked and communicated changed overnight. road: there was no commute; no quick drink in a worth trillions of dollars, even as President Trump Some refused to be constrained, while others café; no spontaneous evening plans. Just at home, took aim at state governors who urged lockdowns, Rinko Kawauchi From the series: Keeping the Fire Going lacked the ability to enforce restrictions or could with loved ones. Or for many, alone. urging Americans to ‘Liberate Michigan’, ‘Liberate As I grow older, I understand that more and more. simply not afford to do so. Hundreds of thousands Virginia’ and ‘Liberate Minnesota’. Infections and Years blend into each other. I can’t tell 2005 before layering soft butter on toast to help warm us to feel that period, to remember what it was like died, and millions around the globe were infected – We have been left with a series deaths spread like wildfire, underpinning fears from 2006 any more than I can distinguish it from back up. Thinking of our own precious moments to live through those times, I listen to the music all thanks to the emergence of a novel coronavirus of blank canvases ... as the grains of danger and violence. In April 2020 alone, four 1995. It becomes increasingly hard to tell whether unlocks feelings, sounds and tastes, and in doing – to the Sex Pistols, to Blondie, to Duran Duran; that is now known as Covid-19. The outbreak has million guns were sold in the US, as citizens braced something happened six or seven years ago or in so, lifts us up and whisks us back in time. I look at the fashion – from flares to shoulder changed the world in ways that will take years to of sand have fallen slowly and themselves for the worst: civil unrest, disobedience fact sixteen or seventeen years ago. Memories of pads to terrible haircuts; I think about the food – come to terms with, and likely in ways that we will relentlessly through the hourglass and a divided country turning in on itself. the past are much easier when linking them to Lived history ... helps us make avocado roulades, arctic rolls and La vache qui rit struggle to understand. Those instincts were not hard to understand, important things that happened. Everyone knows sense not only of the world cheese; I read the books, watch the sport and As the magnificent, touching and glorious We are social animals, noted Aristotle more than for past plagues and pandemics reveal a startling where they were on 9/11, or when the Berlin Wall around us, but also of who we are put on the films that open a cascade of senses – photos in this volume show, the many and obvious two thousand years ago. We thrive on exchanging correlation between violence and outbreaks of started to come down. Or when the Spice Girls split from One Hundred Years of Solitude to Paolo constraints have not affected the ability to be ideas, on listening to each other, on developing ideas contagious disease. During the Black Death, for up – events that did not (usually) directly involve History can be a dry subject to study: all those Rossi scoring for Italy at the World Cup in 1982 creative, to capture images that represent a split and laughing. For all the ‘new normals’, the initial example, horrific attacks were launched on Jews us, but took place around us and framed the world kings and queens, those dates, battles, facts to the first viewing of Dangerous Liaisons. When second as the camera’s shutter is pressed down, excitement of video-conferencing and even virtual all over Europe who were made scapegoats for the we live in. and what Arnold Toynbee is said to have called we think back to things that place us in a specific to evoke how the world was in 2020. In fact, drinks parties, we were cut off from each other and spread of a pathogen that killed perhaps a third It is the personal moments though that are most ‘one damned thing after another’ can make the moment, we open up doors into our own pasts, quite the opposite: the photos selected for this forced to become more introverted than we have of the continent’s population. When large numbers dear and precious to us, and the ones that blossom past feel dull and dusty. But for most people, to think of school mates we haven’t seen for publication are even more evocative, precisely been used to. of people fall ill and die, fears are easily stoked as we think about them. The year a friend got the things that matter about the past are their years, TV programmes we barely remember, for the fact that they open a window on to the world Ironically, if there was some small salvation, it and anxieties aggravated. married makes us remember the first dance at experiences – things we saw, places we visited, to things that made us laugh and cry. that so many of us have not been able to open for came from the solidarity that emerged from the sense Biological devastation is closely linked to the wedding, the person we sat next to at lunch, foods we tried, people we met and loved (or took Lived history is so important as it helps us month upon month. that we were in this together. There was no one who economic trauma too, exacerbating pre-existing the clothes we wore, the car we drove to get there. exception to) – often framed by the great canvas make sense not only of the world around us, but These photos made me yearn for the world I knew, we could envy, no one who had avoided the same inequalities. The brunt of the suffering in any The year a baby was born in the family brings back of history happening around us. also of who we are. And such is the rich tapestry where we were free to move about when, where and fate. In fact, the opposite was the case, for 2020 was pandemic is always borne by the poor, partly others who were in the room when we touched So for me, thinking about the world I grew of life, that we are all different to each other. We how we wanted; a world which offered new and a moment to admire the bravery of others: medical because higher population densities enable the tiny foot of the new arrival, the piles of baby up in during the 1970s and 1980s throws up choose friends who share similar views, often enriching experiences where we met new people staff; frontline workers, researchers working on more rapid spread of disease, partly owing to other kit in the corner, the nervous excitement of the new ideas about the Cold War, about revolution in from similar backgrounds and with experiences, and learned new things; a world where colours, vaccines, those whose loved ones slipped away into factors such as reduced access to primary healthcare parents. Or that time one got caught in the rain Iran, about the US under Reagan and about and yet as we all know, even our closest friends smells, tastes and sounds blended to create new the next life in silence, without a final touch or word and, in the case of Covid-19, mortality levels that and finally made it home, dripping wet, laughing deepening ties in Europe. But when I really want can be different to us in very profound and impressions, new memories, new personal histories to say farewell. are higher for some ethnicities than for others.

6 7 The year the Earth stood still

One of the most important developments of the fears that tomorrow will be darker than today. 2020, then, was the emergence of the Black Lives New technologies present problems that are hard Matter movement, following the killing of George to conceptualise, let alone plan for. Automation Floyd in Minneapolis, and a renewed global focus and artificial intelligence bring new opportunities, on campaigns against racism and on how far but also great pressures for labour forces and we still have to go when it comes to enshrining perhaps most importantly for educational equalities. That was shown in sharp relief too systems to anticipate: King Wuling of Zhao in by steps taken by the Chinese government in north-western China used to warn of the dangers Beijing to impose a new security law on Hong of having skills that were helpful yesterday but Kong which led to large-scale protests, as well are useless today and tomorrow. as continued use of detention camps for Uighurs in western China. ‘Our greatest glory’, said Confucius, Routines ... became like ruts in a ‘is not in never failing, but in rising well-travelled road: there was no every time we fall.’ commute; no quick drink in a café; And of course we live in a world where the no spontaneous evening plans. realities of climate change are such that the Just at home, with loved ones. questions of how we can collaborate to mitigate Or for many, alone the consequences represent one of the great challenges of the 21st century. Then there are The lockdowns presented challenges and major geopolitical currents to navigate too, not opportunities alike. India and Bangladesh saw the least the tensions between the US and China, evacuation of five million people at the height of which have deepened considerably in the last the pandemic, as the biggest storm in twenty years few years, but also in almost every other corner swept into South Asia. Or there was South Africa, on Earth – from sub-Saharan Africa to India, the country in Africa hit hardest by coronavirus, from the Arctic to the Pacific islands where new where the government tried to stop the spread rivalries, new competition and partnerships will of disease by banning alcohol and cigarettes – determine the decades ahead. Coronavirus has on the basis that consumption is social and drawn attention from all of these, throwing up that their temporary removal from sale would a smokescreen that has hidden some of these limit gatherings. major trends and also making us question if, Shahidul Alam That was one sign of changing behaviours during A woman and boy cry out for food at when and how life will be different once what became the largest social science experiment night in Dhanmondi, Bangladesh vaccines or interventions allow us to move in history. As the pace of life changed, so did our freely and safely. daily habits, spending patterns and even our Perhaps not surprisingly, as consumption of soft But many were left behind, from people in Until then, the photos in this book offer fashion taste. With office work all but suspended in drinks likewise became primarily home-based, rural areas to those living alone, from those a lifeline of hope. They remind us of places, many cities around the world, sales of smart shirts can producers had to admit that they were without access to digital connections to peoples, times and experiences that have not collapsed overnight, while those of leisurewear running short of raw materials in the face those who were struggling for whatever reason been lost, just obscured for now. ‘Our greatest soared. A global toilet paper scare led to hoarding of unprecedented demand. before Covid-19 hit. Some of the impact and glory’, said Confucius, ‘is not in never failing, and to fist fights in supermarkets, while sales of 2020 was a glorious year too for those invested the consequences had ramifications thousands of but in rising every time we fall.’ Those are wise bidets to those who feared being caught out rose in the right sectors – notably pharmaceuticals, miles away. Countries like India, the Philippines words that remind us that confronting dangers sharply. Music streaming services reported a but also online sales and services, with market and those across Central Asia which rely heavily and difficulties is normal. Eventually, we can Peter Frankopan is Professor of Global History at the University of Oxford, where he is Stavros Niarchos Foundation significant fall in upbeat tracks that provide the life capitalisations reaching breathtaking valuations. on remittances from migrant workers doing overcome these and move forwards; and as Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research and Senior and soul for parties and for working out in the gym, In 2018, Apple became the world’s first trillion- difficult jobs in countries far from home were we do so, they fade into the past. And that is Research Fellow at Worcester College. His books include and a rise in more relaxed and easy listening. dollar company; during 2020, just two years later, severely affected. As the global economy went why we come back to studying history time and The New York Times bestseller, The Silk Roads: A New History With restaurants and bars closed, many turned it broke through the two trillion-dollar barrier, into cardiac arrest, financial lifelines were cut again – because reliving painful times is more of the World, which was Daily Telegraph History Book of the to the bottle at home, with sales of wine and beer carried up into the ether alongside Amazon, almost immediately. comforting than living through them. Year and Sunday Times Books of the Decade (2010–2020), and The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World, which enjoying double-digit growth to the year before – Facebook, Netflix, Zoom and others whose ability It is easy to forget too that the world before the won Italy’s Carical Prize. He advises governments, multilateral though that was nothing compared to the rise to enable us to connect to each other and be pandemic was a harsh and difficult one, with institutions and corporations around the world, including in sales of canned cocktails, up 300%. entertained commanded a premium. many societies riven by division and haunted by the Pictet Group.

8 9 Pandemic, pain, language and culpability Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

The after-effects of the Covid-19 My thoughts turned to Uganda, to Africa. To how valleys were swamps and streams filled with virus on our bodies are not yet clear, we are chasing after the West. We want to be fish. Kampala teemed with vegetation. You left the next USA. We want the next Britain, Spain, your home for a month and when you returned but I have noticed a sensitivity to Portugal, France or Netherlands to be in Africa. vegetation was knocking at your door. Even though language and an anger no different But we forget that to get where they are, these I grew up in the city, my childhood was remarkably nations brutalised the world for centuries. Not close to the land, to animals, birds and insects. If to the one I always felt towards a just fellow humans as slaves, colonial and neo- you wanted to eat chicken, you saw it lose its life. mosquito after a bout of malaria. colonial exploitation, and destabilisation of An aunt brought a fiancé to visit and a goat lost communities, but land violence in the form of coal, its life. These were the traumatic consequences of For three-and-a-half months in oil, gas, mineral extraction, then water, air, noise eating meat. It was rarely eaten. Back then, among recovery from Covid-19, I could and light pollution. They denuded the world of the Ganda, a large number of people were allergic Stéphane Couturier forests and other forms of vegetation which led to beef and milk. Now that these consequences are neither read nor write. From the series: Noveaux constructeurs to the extermination of wildlife. I found myself tucked away from the public, meat is everywhere. questioning the Industrial Revolution. I believe Older generations say, ‘We never used to see cancer While watching the BBC and CNN for news and the West, the huge number of deaths among that the Industrial Revolution is partly to blame in this country.’ Whenever I return to Uganda I am updates, I noticed the language around the black and brown people in the developed world, for these strange and difficult times. There is a link taken aback by Kampala’s sheer dryness. You have pandemic. It arose in a similar style in emails to the demonstrations of Black Lives Matter between land violence and pandemics, especially to drive 45 miles away from the city to find that and conversations. It was a language of shock, around the world and, from HIV/AIDS to SARS zoonotic diseases. According to the science, three lushness that I grew up with. disbelief, outrage, blame and self-consolation. and MERS, all these phenomena have one common out of four new diseases spread from animals. I suspect that readers in the West might say, The BBC and CNN’s idea of the world was a few link – the unequal and unfair way we share the I ask myself: is Africa ready to go all the way? ‘But Africans need to have fewer children.’ However, industrialised countries. Africa, when included world’s resources. Could Africa live with itself? So far, it looks as having lived in Britain for 19 years I now know that a in the world, was South Africa, at one time it was though Africa will. By 2008, Africa was losing child in the West, his needs from childhood through Nigeria. The world became Western European But I did not realise until I saw a B. Grimm advert. its forests at twice the rate of the world. Ways to teen years, his adult lifestyle up to when he dies (life and North American countries, Australia, Margaret Courtney-Clarke modernise without violating the Earth are few, expectancy in the UK is 81 years while Uganda’s is New Zealand, Russia and China. I call these From the series: When Tears Don’t Matter We knew what was coming, the signs were all there. slow and expensive. 55 years), and the pressures that life puts on world the centred world. We knew we had to change but we didn’t. Destroying resources would sustain more than 50 Ugandan In emails and in conversation, one phrase kept But these strange and difficult times depend on we were nature’s blameless victims. I will not wild habitats, exploiting wildlife, turning a blind All these phenomena have one lives. According to World Factbook, Britain’s daily coming up – ‘these strange and difficult times’. It is you having experienced times that were neither comment on SARS, MERS or swine flu, but I must eye. Maybe it would go away. It didn’t. It began to common link – the unequal and unfair per capita consumption of power is 547 watts, in the an old phrase, attributed to George Francis Train, strange nor difficult. For a lot of people, for a long presume that these brought strange and difficult bite back. Primates and HIV. Civets and SARs. Bats way we share the world’s resources US 1,377 watts and in Uganda 8 watts. Rwanda ‘Strange times are these in which we live when time, times have been getting strange and difficult. times for someone, that they too had a language and Ebola. Covid-19 is not the first pandemic and it consumes 4 watts. It is the Western lifestyle from old and young are taught falsehoods in school.’ And according to environmental science, times are that soothed. won’t be the last unless we deal with the root causes. Colonialism brought two cash crops to Uganda – which the Earth is haemorrhaging. The worry about I imagine it has been a recurring phrase throughout only going to get stranger and harder. It is just that For black, brown and native people in North Time to stop the wildlife trade. And to support coffee and cotton. Millions of acres were cleared Africa should be centred on the fact that we Africans time in the West. However, I first became aware of it for the centred world this is the first pandemic to America, Europe and Australia, our inflated compassionate sustainable farming. Let’s change to make way for these cash crops. At that point, are bent on emulating the Western lifestyle by all during a conversation on the phone when a friend pinch and prick collectively in almost a century. death rate is strange and hard to grapple with. our relation to nature for ever for all life on Earth. Ugandans did not realise that clearing acres and means necessary. But then that would mean the sighed, ‘Jenny, these are strange and difficult times ...’. For myself, who left Uganda for a better life acres of land to replace millions of indigenous West giving up its lifestyle. And that is the problem, I remember wondering, exactly which strange and According to environmental science, in Britain, it is a vulgar irony that I am more My first reaction was to question the inclusive ‘we’ forms of plant life with two foreign crops was a not the number of African babies being born. difficult times are we talking about here? times are only going to get stranger vulnerable to a Covid-19 death in Britain, with and dismiss it as the kind of collective pronoun form of land violence. Millions of species of plant, My other thought in my post-Covid-19 angst was I first heard the phrase in 2016, after Brexit. and harder all its technology and advanced medical care, that says ‘world’ but actually means industrialised insect and animal life crucial to the ecology were about the way we relate to nature, especially in the Especially as the far-right swept across Europe. than I would be in Uganda. So far, in Uganda, countries. But then I read Chris York’s article, lost. Now, seeing the level of ecological distress West. The notion of Man vs Nature. When nature Back then it was whispered within the ‘Remain’ For a Ugandan of my age, nothing beats the late where there is no pretence of a healthcare The UK and US were Ranked Top for Pandemic in Uganda, there are efforts to try and repatriate strikes, you hear: Nature 1, Human 0. Because camp. When Trump became US president the 1980s and 1990s, the HIV/AIDS days. AIDS was system, Covid-19 deaths are a tiny fraction of Preparedness. What went Wrong? According to indigenous plants which might aid in healing the we love to see the underdog win. But I think there phrase was accompanied by a wry smile and creative at killing humans. It took its time but deaths of Ugandans in the diaspora. There are Global Health, in 2019 the US and UK were 83% land. We are now discovering that land violence are problems with this perspective. The fact that a sigh. Covid-19’s arrival and the lockdown spread like an invisible wildfire. People died like half a million Ugandans in Europe and the US and 77.9% prepared, respectively. Two African is not just the extraction of oil, coal, gas and other we have placed ourselves outside of nature. As if popularised it. No doubt, Black Lives Matter fumigated bugs. It took mums and dads, taught compared to 42 million at home. countries came last. This meant that governments minerals, it is farming which does not take into humans are not part of it. protests, a movement to defund the police and the twelve-year-olds how to be parents and wiped out And yet, from Brexit which was a reaction to around the world had been warned that we were consideration indigenous fauna. As if ‘nature’ is something out there. And when pulling down of statues of racists and slavers was entire families. Our soothing phrase was, ‘Whoever migration, the mainstreaming of the far-right due for a pandemic! In that case, I thought, the I was a child in 1970s Uganda. I remember the did nature become the underdog? Is it any wonder someone’s idea of these strange and difficult times. sent this to us is relentless.’ And then Ebola came across Europe and the US, the election of Trump, language of blame is exactly what the world needs. number of streams and swamps around the city. that for a long time we perceived ‘nature’ as At a certain point, the phrase became a soother, and Ugandans sighed, ‘But what did we do to the the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the The words in the advert did not go far enough to Kampala, our capital, has a lot of steep hills but something to be conquered, or of no consequence like a stuffed animal, we cuddled up to it when the world?’ Phrases such as ‘these strange and difficult lockdown, the rejection of science, the visibility address the centred world’s culpability, but we can that meant four times the number of wetlands in unless it served our needs? This separation of earth’s cruelty became unbearable. times’ echoed a sense of helplessness, the idea that of conspiracy theories, the tribal divisions in challenge that. the valleys beneath those hills. In each of those ourselves from nature has had two consequences.

10 11 Pandemic, pain, language and culpability

Photographs

lungs and that they were playing ping-pong to the whole world through campaigns similar to with them. But why should Brazil listen to this those against smoking and cancer. A flight ticket sudden guilt-tripping when all it wants is should come with an estimation of how much ice development? After all, the developed world, might melt as a result of your journey. You buy which is pointing fingers, did the same. For a long food packed in plastic; it should come with the time, we had no idea of the implications of rising label noting how many centuries it would take to sea levels on Pacific islands until someone said disintegrate. Every country’s culpability should that the displaced populations would migrate be put to its people without fear or favour. Drills to industrialised countries. for a pandemic should be given as much priority as fire drills. The world can stop for a few days What it has done effectively is to carry out a drill once a year. All populations bring to the centred world the fact deserve to know their countries’ preparedness and that humanity is part of nature, what needs to be done. This, I believe, would push that nature has creative ways humanity to come up with cleaner ways of living, Pavel Wolberg and sooner. Jackals take over Yarkon Park in Tel Aviv in search of food during the Covid-19 lockdown of regulating itself. It is saying, ‘Humans, be warned.’ Firstly, it has prevented us from realising that There were moments when the BBC and CNN we are, by far, the most destructive force of were forced to reckon with the world in its entirety nature. Secondly, we have failed to realise that during this Covid-19 pandemic. Apparently, 80% by destroying nature we are destroying ourselves. of the whole world went into lockdown at one (Un-)fortunately, nature sees us as an integral point. This time, animals too became part of the part of itself. Perhaps it sees our brief existence world when, during the lockdown, they ventured the way we see cancer in a toe or a finger. In order beyond their usual confines to explore places to heal, you might have to amputate less vital bits previously denied to them. Fish became part of the of yourself. world when they returned to the canals of Venice. Recently, as the US struggled to contain the Birds that were thought to have disappeared pandemic, an anchor on CNN said, ‘The world suddenly reappeared. I am incapable of grasping watched as big countries like the US, Spain, the world. It is too wide, too high, too deep to France, Britain struggled with Covid-19 while envisage, though I suspect that plastic is doing a small countries like Rwanda managed.’ … good job of knowing it. However, with access to Another said, ‘The world as we know it will never the internet and smartphones around the world be the same again.’ I asked once more, which we can collectively document the world and keep world watched, which world will never be the an eye on the changes. This data, together with same, which the same? Because, again, this world innovations on how to protect the earth, can be does not include Africa. Uganda has never been collected and shared around the world as news. the same since HIV/AIDS arrived, people are still From my experience of AIDS and Ebola, so far dying. I am certain that very few people in Asia Covid-19 has been ambitious in its reach. However, and Africa watched the big countries struggle in terms of deaths, it lacks the discreet but lethal Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is a Ugandan fiction writer. with Covid-19. patience of HIV and the sheer wrath of Ebola. Its Her first novel, Kintu, won the Kwani? Manuscript Project in However, this pick-and-choose attitude flamboyance has brought the world to a standstill; 2013. Her short story, Let’s Tell This Story Properly, won the towards the world, the idea that some parts of it has got the whole world’s attention but so far it regional (Africa) and Global Commonwealth Short story prize 2014. Her collection of short stories called Manchester Happened the world are more ‘world’ than others, has a largely depends on pre-existing conditions. What (for the UK/Commonwealth publication) and Let’s Tell This Story deadly consequence. It has led to blindness it has done effectively is bring home to the centred Properly (for US/Canada publication) came out in spring 2019 towards what is happening, ecologically, in the world the fact that humanity is part of nature, that and was shortlisted for Hearst’s UK Big Book prize. marginalised world. For a long time, ‘the world’ nature has creative ways of regulating itself. It is She is a Cheuse International Writing Fellow (2019). Her second was not aware that parts of the Amazon were set saying, ‘Humans, be warned’. The quoted advert is novel, The First Woman for UK/Commonwealth and A Girl is a Body of Water for US/Canada publication, came out in autumn on fire deliberately to clear land to produce palm a start in bringing the pain we suffer as a result of 2020. She has a PhD from Lancaster University and is a lecturer oil and fodder for livestock. Until someone pandemics in line with our culpability. What needs at Manchester Metropolitan University. Jennifer is a recipient said that Brazil was in custody of the Earth’s to be done is to bring this culpability forcefully of the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize 2018.

12 These masks reflect both the street culture and the political moment in America … they are a time stamp and a memento mori of the 2020 pandemic in New York and America.

Ross McDonnell

Ross McDonnell is a photographer and filmmaker born in Dublin, Ireland. His work is defined by long-term photography projects and films that explore societies, individuals and cultures often during periods of radical transition. His debut feature film, Colony, premiered in 2009 at the Toronto International Film Festival and won the IDFA Best First Feature Award. He has since continued working as a director, cinematographer and photographer across a broad spectrum of platforms, shifting between the moving and still image on large-scale film productions, his own films and photography works for exhibition and publication. He is a recipient of grants and awards from the Jerome Foundation, Culture Ireland and the San Francisco Film Society. He was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Hope in 2019.

14 15 My most recent project explores the history of female hysteria … given the isolation and quarantine, I am finding new ways of working. Instead of building a repository of images based on my fieldwork, I now work with ready-made photographs from image banks and existing archives.

Ilit Azoulay

Ilit Azoulay was born in Jaffa in 1972. She lives and works in Tel Aviv and Berlin, and received her BFA and MFA from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem. Ilit has received awards including the Constantiner Photography Award for an Israeli Artist (2011), the Israeli Culture and Sports Ministry Prize (2011 & 2017), Outset project grant (2017). Her works appear in numerous collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York and Centre Pompidou, Paris. Recent publications are No Thing Dies, following her long-term project at the Israel Museum, Finally Without End, an artist monograph, and Shifting Degrees of Certainty. She was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Disorder in 2015.

16 17 The ‘Beginning’ and the ‘End’ are interchanged, creating an endless story ... symbols for this unknown time, for the isolation that we suddenly faced, for not knowing where we are heading.

Saskia Groneberg Saskia Groneberg lives and works in Berlin and Munich. She is interested in artificially-moulded nature which she questions as projections of profound human longings that arise from certain cultural, political and social circumstances. She incorporates other mediums such as video and installation into her artistic work. She won the gute aussichten – New German Photography prize in 2012. Her practice has been exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Deichtorhallen, Hamburg; Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City; Museum für konkrete Kunst, Ingolstadt and others. Groneberg was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Space in 2017.

18 19 Then came the unthinkable, a feeling that the Earth had stopped turning as a result of a virus and widespread lockdown. The effects were felt on a planetary scale … These images bookend my Datazone project as prologue and epilogue.

Philippe Chancel

Philippe Chancel was born in 1959. He lives and works in Paris. His series include Regards d’artistes, portraits of contemporary artists, and Souvenirs, a series of portraits of capital cities glimpsed through shop windows. DPRK, in which Chancel offers a vision of North Korea, was exhibited at The Photographers’ Gallery, London and appeared in book form, published by Thames and Hudson. Begun in 2005, the Datazone project highlights the current excesses in the political, economic and social fields. Chancel was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Power in 2012.

20 21 The lockdown, while necessary, was ill thought out. Provisions for those ... whose families live day to day upon their meagre earnings, had not been made … The hungry have been crying for food in the streets of the well-to-do neighbourhoods of Gulshan, Baridhara, Banani and Dhanmondi.

Shahidul Alam

Shahidul Alam is a photographer, writer, curator and human rights activist. He was born in 1955 in Bangladesh where he lives and works. He obtained a PhD in Chemistry from the University of London before taking up photography. President of the Bangladesh Photographic Society for three terms, Alam set up the Drik agency; Bangladesh Photographic Institute; Chobi Mela festival; Majority World agency and Pathshala South Asian Media Institute. In 2020, he was awarded a CPJ International Press Freedom Award. He was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Hope in 2019.

22 23 Masks can signify many things today – anxiety, isolation, social responsibility, fear or safety. Normally they are about blocking off from other people, creating distance and disguising identity. But in our ‘new normal’ this material barrier has become a unifier, holding us together.

Gideon Mendel

Gideon Mendel’s intimate style of image-making and commitment to socially engaged projects began during his time as a news and ‘struggle’ photographer documenting the final years of apartheid. Born in Johannesburg in 1959, this experience marked him deeply. In 1991, he moved to London, and continued to respond to global concerns, especially HIV/AIDS. Since 2007, Mendel has been working on Drowning World, an art and advocacy project about flooding. During 2016, Mendel received the inaugural Pollock- Krasner Foundation’s Pollock Prize for Creativity and the Greenpeace Photo Award. He has also received the W. Eugene Smith Grant for Humanistic Photography, the Amnesty International Media Award and six World Press Photo awards. He has twice been shortlisted for the Prix Pictet, in 2015 for Disorder and 2019 for Hope.

24 25 These ‘blood mandalas’ are seductive and deceptive, visceral and emblematic. Photographed at a very high resolution and printed to large scale they become imposing and physical, simultaneously seductive and repulsive, vital and deadly.

Ori Gersht

Ori Gersht was born in Israel in 1967, but has lived in London for over 30 years. Throughout his career his work has been concerned with history, memory and landscape. He often adopts a poetic, metaphorical approach to explore the difficulties of visually representing conflict and violent events or histories. Gersht challenges the technical limitations of photography. Frequently referencing art history, the viewer is visually seduced before being confronted with darker and more complex themes. This has included an exploration of his own family’s experiences during the Holocaust, a series of post-conflict landscapes in Bosnia and a trilogy of slow-motion films in which traditional still lives explode on screen. Gersht was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Disorder in 2015.

26 27 Through a window, we see the wounded observation of our world and the absolute need for reconstruction. In other words, the nightmare and the dream.

Reza Deghati

Reza Deghati was born in 1952 in Iran. His National Geographic assignments have taken him to over 100 countries as witness to humanity’s conflicts and catastrophes. His work has featured in Time magazine, Stern, Newsweek, El País and Paris Match. Crossing Destinies, a landmark exhibition in Paris, drew one million people over four months in the summer of 2003. His giant panorama, A Dream of Humanity, along the banks of the Seine (2015) showed portraits of refugees around the world. Since 1983, he has volunteered to teach the language of images to youths and women in conflict zones, founding Ainaworld in Afghanistan in 2001, an NGO teaching adapted media. Reza was a Fellow of the National Geographic Society (2006–2012) and senior Fellow of the Ashoka Foundation. In 2005, France appointed him a Chevalier of the National Order of Merit. Deghati was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Water in 2008.

28 29 There is a fear. A fear of bringing this back home to our friends and family. A fear of getting exposed and sick. But we knew that we would have to be ready for anything when we signed up for this. This is a game changer for all of us, whether you’re getting paid or volunteering, but we’re still in it and we’re going to win. It’s the passion and personal belief of helping others that keeps us going.

Ed Kashi

Ed Kashi is an American photojournalist, filmmaker, speaker and educator. A member of VII Photo Agency, he was named 2015’s Multimedia Photographer of the Year in the POYi Awards for his short films. Projects include stories for National Geographic, The New Yorker and MSNBC. In 2012, he extensively covered Hurricane Sandy for Time magazine. His editorial assignments and personal projects have generated nine books. In 2002, Kashi in partnership with his wife, Julie Winokur, founded Talking Eyes Media. The non-profit company has produced award-winning short films, exhibits, books and multimedia pieces that explore significant social issues. Kashi was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Earth in 2009.

30 31 In this moment where bad news seems to be everywhere, I think it has never been more important for us to collectively remember the beauty of our world, and there is no medium more suited to carry that message than photography.

Chris Jordan Chris Jordan is an American artist, photographer and film producer based in Seattle, Washington, USA. His work is in collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; North Carolina Museum of Art among others. His series Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption (2003–2005) documents the magnitude of America’s waste and consumption. In Katrina’s Wake: Portraits of Loss from an Unnatural Disaster (2005) were taken in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Jordan was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Growth and awarded the Prix Pictet Commission project in 2011.

32 33 The banks of fluorescent lights in Tokyo’s stairwells and passageways, all of them evenly spaced, soaring upward into the night, the world’s most orderly constellations ... the city's unpeopled hidden geometry.

Naoya Hatakeyama

Naoya Hatakeyama was born in 1958 in Iwate, Japan. He lives and works in Tokyo. Hatakeyama studied at the School of Art and Design at the University of Tsukuba in 1981, and later completed postgraduate studies there in 1984. In 1997, Hatakeyama received the 22nd Kimura Ihei Memorial Photography Award. His exhibitions include Global Cities, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London (2007); Heavy Light: Recent Photography and Video from Japan, International Center of Photography, New York (2008); Excavating the Future City: Photographs by Naoya Hatakeyama, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis (2018); N. H. & Toyo Ito, Under Construction, Kenchiku Shiryo Kenkyusha, Taichung Opera House (2019); Naoya Hatakeyama: Excavating the Future City, Aperture Foundation, New York (2018). Hatakeyama was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Earth in 2009.

34 35 This photograph of buildings in Brasilia’s banking sector represents a world that has suddenly become obsolete.

Stéphane Couturier

Stéphane Couturier was born in France in 1957. His photographs are in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Los Angeles County Museum of Art and National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. His photographs of construction sites in Berlin, demolished buildings in Havana or an automobile assembly plant in Valenciennes are all about transformation, a subject he explores with a strong sense of design and composition and a specific sense of colour. In 2018, the Fernand Léger National Museum, Biot highlighted the connections between his work and the painting of Fernand Léger. He was awarded the Niépce Prize in 2003. Couturier was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Growth in 2011.

36 37 The LCD screens depict elaborate crowd scenes … imagery from various public gatherings – rallies, concerts, sporting events … Made five years ago, these works have taken on new meaning since our relation to crowds has shifted towards the unknowable.

Matthew Brandt

Matthew Brandt lives and works in Los Angeles. He received his BFA from The Cooper Union, New York and MFA from UCLA, Los Angeles. Brandt has been the subject of solo shows at the Newark Museum; Columbus Museum of Art and Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art. Recent group exhibitions include New Territory: Landscape Photography Today, Denver Art Museum; Light, Paper, Process: Reinventing Photography, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; What is a Photograph?, International Center of Photography, New York and Land Marks, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In 2014, a monograph devoted to Brandt’s work was published by Damiani. Matthew Brandt was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Disorder in 2015.

38 39 The movements of the actor appear to alter the two-dimensional renderings, compressing space and time and transforming the urban landscape into a fictional storyboard.

Robin Rhode

Robin Rhode studied at the University of Johannesburg as well as at the Association of Film and Dramatic Arts (AFDA), from 1996 to 2001. Recent solo exhibitions of his work have been organised by the Stevenson Gallery, Amsterdam (2019); Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (2019) and Lehmann Maupin, New York (2018). Select group exhibitions include Gridology, Lehmann Maupin, Hong Kong; NOW, National Galleries, Edinburgh (2018); Spots, Dots, Pips, Tiles: An Exhibition About Dominoes, Pérez Art Museum Miami (2017); Art/Afrique, le nouvel atelier, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2017) and Staging Action: Performance in Photography Since 1960, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2011). Rhode was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Hope in 2019.

40 41 My studio is in Heda, a small fishing town in Izu Peninsula. During the coronavirus pandemic, I have been going down to the ocean to watch the fishermen staring out at sea, wondering when they can go fishing again. Every day I have been taking pictures of the shadow of the ropes, which shift due to the force of the waves … my own anxiety and impatience manifested themselves as a line, and this echoed inside me like a sutra.

Sohei Nishino

Sohei Nishino produces work based on his personal experiences obtained through walking and travel. His work, A Different Kind of Order, was shown at the Triennal of the International Center of Photography, New York. Solo exhibitions include the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He was selected for the Foam Talent award in 2013, and named winner of the MAST Foundation for Photography award in 2018. Nishino was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Space in 2017.

42 43 I set out to portray the city of Istanbul in crisis and confinement, but what I found was a diverse social fabric where pockets of hope and human resilience prevail.

Rena Effendi

Rena Effendi lives and works in Istanbul. Her early work focused on the oil industry where over six years, she followed 1,700 km of oil pipeline through Georgia and Turkey. Her first book, Pipe Dreams: A Chronicle of Lives along the Pipeline, was published in 2009, followed by Liquid Land in 2012. She has received the Alexia 2018 Professional Grant, the Prince Claus Fund Award for Culture and Development, the World Press Photo, the SONY World Photography Award and the Getty Images Editorial Grant. She is represented by National Geographic Creative agency and ILEX Gallery. Effendi was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Power in 2012 and Hope in 2019.

44 45 Joe Conway is unable to afford an apartment … He spends his nights on the steps of the Main Post Office. He is softly spoken and uncomplaining. He just earnestly wishes for an apartment. His will to live is strong.

Joel Sternfeld

Joel Sternfeld is an artist-photographer whose work explores utopic and dystopic possibilities of the American experience. Ever since the publication of his landmark study American Prospects in 1987 his work has maintained conceptual and political themes as well as humour and social commentary. His series On This Site (1996) examines violence in America. Sweet Earth: Experimental Utopias in America (2006) is a survey of American human socialisation, alternative ways of living, of hopeful being. Sternfeld is the recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships and spent a year in Italy on a Rome Prize. He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College, where he holds the Noble Foundation Chair in Art and Cultural History. Sternfeld was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Power in 2012.

46 47 At nightfall, I would escape from this seclusion, venturing out onto the city streets which had become sombre and austere. I went out to free myself from fear … Sometimes my son accompanied me on these outings. I wanted us to experience these intense, ephemeral moments together.

Benoit Aquin

Benoit Aquin was born in 1963 in Montreal and studied at the New England School of Photography, Boston. He lives and works in Montreal. From 2000, he began a series of ecological projects La Chasse (2002–2009); Le grand nord (2004) and The Chinese Dust Bowl (2006–2009). His documentary Les dépossédés (directed by Mathieu Roy, 2016) and a series entitled L’agriculture au Québec, un photo-roman d’anticipation (2015) dealt with agriculture and world hunger. La dimension éthérique du réseau par Anton Bequii (2019) addresses the rise of the technological empire. Aquin is represented by the Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Montreal. He was named winner of Prix Pictet Water in 2008.

48 49 My props are nearly as important to me as my photographic artworks ... I’ve spent endless hours categorising them by type, material and colour ... They have had many lives, and I don’t want them anymore. I don’t want any of my collections of anything – cut-outs and figurines, clothing and shoes – I want them to have a different future.

Laurie Simmons

Laurie Simmons has had solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1 and Artists Space, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Baltimore Museum of Art; San José Museum of Art; Gothenburg Museum of Art; Neues Museum, Nuremberg; The Jewish Museum, New York; and the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis. Simmons’s retrospective opened in 2018 at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and travelled to Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in early 2019. Her feature film, My Art, premiered at the 73rd Venice Film Festival and had a North American premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. Simmons was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Consumption in 2013.

50 51 These agricultural labourers are considered essential at this time but because their work is usually done in close proximity to each other, they are especially at risk of contracting Covid-19.

Brent Stirton

Brent Stirton is senior correspondent for Getty Images. He focuses on issues related to man’s connection to the environment. His work is published in National Geographic, Stern, Le Figaro, GEO and other international titles. He works with the Gates Foundation, the African Parks network, Human Rights Watch and is a fellow of the National Geographic Society. Stirton was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Disorder in 2015.

52 53 The corona disaster in Tokyo has turned the ordinary into the ‘extraordinary’.

Motoyuki Daifu

Motoyuki Daifu was born in 1985 in Tokyo, where he lives and works. He graduated from Tokyo Visual Arts in 2007 and exhibited Hitotsubo-ten the same year. He explores humour in the everyday, traversing the ordinary and extraordinary. Recent exhibitions include untitled (surround), The Green Gallery, Milwaukee (2019) and MISAKO & ROSEN, Tokyo (2018); Japanese Photography from Postwar to Now, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2016); My Family is a Pubis, so I cover them in Pretty Panties, Little Big Man Gallery, Los Angeles (2014); Still Life, MISAKO & ROSEN, Tokyo (2014); and Lovesody, Lombard-Freid Projects, New York (2012). Publications include Lovesody, Project Family, Still Life and Holy Onion. He was nominated for the Nissan Art Award in 2017. Daifu was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Consumption in 2013.

54 55 Numbers convert individuals into collectives to fight against the odds. Numbers replace lives with statistics.

Munem Wasif

Munem Wasif is based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. His photography and filmmaking investigate complex social and political issues in a humanistic language. He was one of the curators of the Chobi Mela VIII–X International Festival of Photography. He has had exhibitions worldwide including the Centre Pompidou and Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Whitechapel Gallery, London in association with Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; Museu d’Art Contemporani, Barcelona and Fotomuseum Winterthur. His photographs have been published in Le Monde, The Sunday Times Magazine, GEO, The Guardian, Politiken, Mare, Du, Days Japan, L’espresso, Libération, The Wall Street Journal and many others. He is represented by Agence Vu in Paris and Project 88 in Mumbai. Wasif was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Water in 2008 and Space in 2017. He was also awarded the Prix Pictet Commission in 2008.

56 57 Despite poverty and the collapse of societal structures, ‘shadow’ people, largely invisible to the outside world, hold to traditions within which there is beauty and the resilient spirit of individuals.

Margaret Courtney-Clarke

Margaret Courtney-Clarke was born in 1949 in Swakopmund, Namibia, where she lives and works. She began working under Italian photographer/filmmaker Pasquale De Antonis before magazine assignments in Europe and Africa. In 1979, Courtney-Clarke became persona non grata under apartheid laws and renounced her South African citizenship – later returning to South West Africa asserting her Namibian birth right under the protection of the UN. Her work Cry Sadness into the Coming Rain (2014–2018) marked a return to Namibia and her engagement with a people and landscape in crisis. Other publications include the acclaimed trilogy on the art of West African women, Ndebele (2002), African Canvas (1990) and Imazighen (1996). Courtney-Clarke was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Hope in 2019.

58 59 Left together with an iPhone in the middle of a pandemic, all kinds of strange things happen ...

Chris Steele-Perkins

Chris Steele-Perkins moved from Rangoon, Myanmar to London in 1949. In 1971, he started working as a freelance photographer for relief organisations and travel assignments. He joined the Paris-based Viva agency in 1976. His first book, The Teds, was published in 1979. Chris joined Magnum, where his more recent large-scale project covered Afghanistan. He is now also working extensively in Japan and England. His reportages have won several awards, including World Press Photo (2000), Royal Photographic Society Terence Donovan Award (2008), Arts Council GB Award (2010). His latest book England, My England, is a personal retrospective of work shot in England over the last 40 years. Steele-Perkins was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Earth in 2009.

60 61 So many feelings are at play; feelings of isolation, distance and contemplation as well as a realisation that this time in history is bigger than just this virus … This is not a warped reality; it is just reality and it comes out of man being out of balance with nature.

Nadav Kander

Nadav Kander was born in 1961 in Tel Aviv. He lives and works in London. Selected projects include Yangtze – The Long River; Bodies: 6 Women, 1 Man and Obama’s People, a 52-portrait series commissioned by The New York Times Magazine. His series Dark Line – The Thames Estuary follows the landscape of the River Thames at its point of connection with the sea. In 2019, Steidl published a book of portraiture entitled The Meeting. Kander received an Honorary Fellowship Award from the Royal Photographic Society and in 2019 was the recipient of the World Photography Organisation’s Outstanding Contribution to Photography. He was named the winner of Prix Pictet Earth in 2009.

62 63 The mask unites identities and forces in perpetual motion in an artistic confrontation which summons the past and the present.

Nyaba Léon Ouedraogo

Nyaba Léon Ouedraogo was born in 1978 in Burkina Faso. Injury caused him to turn from competitive athletics to photography. Assistant to the Parisian photographer Jean- Paul Dekers, still-life photographer, fashion and industrial photographer and travel enthusiast Ouedraogo now devotes himself to photographic journalism. His approach, as much photojournalism as it is documentary work, consists in ‘not showing images for what they depict, but for what they transmit’. He is the co-founder of the group Topics Visual Arts Platform. Ouedraogo was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Growth in 2010.

64 65 This body of work reflects on the impact of three different pandemics and the subsequent travel and mobility restrictions imposed by the Chinese government on the city of Beijing (sars 2001, h1n1 2011 and covid-19 2020).

Edgar Martins

Edgar Martins was born in 1977 in Évora, Portugal, but grew up in Macau, China. In 1996, he moved to the UK, where he completed a BA in Photography and Social Sciences at the University of the Arts, London and an MA in Photography and Fine Art at the Royal College of Art. His work is represented in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford; RIBA, London; Dallas Museum of Art; Fondation Carmignac, Paris and Fondazione MAST, Bologna among others. His first book – Black Holes & Other Inconsistencies – was awarded the Thames & Hudson and RCA Society Book Art Prize. Between 2002 and 2018, Martins published 15 separate monographs, which were exhibited internationally at PS1 MoMA, New York; MOPA, San Diego and MACRO, Rome among many others. Martins was the recipient of the inaugural New York Photography Award (2008), the BES Photo Prize (2009), the SONY World Photography Award (2009, 2018) and the LensCulture Fine Art Awards (2018). Martins was selected to represent Macau at the 54th Venice Biennale. He was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Earth in 2009.

66 67 An ominous passing – a hospital ship slips almost unseen beneath New York’s iconic Verrazzano- Narrows Bridge.

An-My Lê

An-My Lê was born in Saigon in 1960. Her family was evacuated from Vietnam at the end of the war in 1975 and became political refugees in the United States. She took up photography by chance and for four years worked as a staff photographer for the Les Compagnons du Devoir craftsmen’s guild in Paris. In 1991, while studying for an MFA at Yale, she was encouraged to produce more autobiographical work. Over the next ten years, she focused on the theme of war, its myth and memory. That work became a trilogy, Viêt Nam (1994–1998), Small Wars (1999–2002) and 29 Palms (2003–2004). Small Wars was published by Aperture in 2005. Lê’s expansive Silent General project (2015–present) documents a symbolically- charged strand of recent history in the United States. Lê lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She has been teaching at Bard College, New York since 1998. The first comprehensive solo exhibition of her work was held at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh in March 2020. Lê was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Power in 2012.

68 69 What began as a contemplation of the emptiness and silence in an abandoned territory, became an exploration of the past that existed in the Chernobyl Zone long before the nuclear disaster.

Maxim Dondyuk

Maxim Dondyuk was born in Ukraine in 1983. He has been creating and promoting his own documentary projects since 2010, having previously worked as a photojournalist for Ukrainian media. From 2016, he has worked on a long-term photographic research project, Untitled Project, combining photographs with archival material found in the Chernobyl zone. He was awarded International Photographer of the Year at the Lucie Awards, Magnum Photo’s ‘30 under 30’ and finalist of the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography. His works are held in the National Museum of Photography, Bogotá; the Benaki Museum, Athens and the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in WWII, Kiev. Dondyuk was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Disorder in 2015.

70 71 This spring was incredible for its abundance of everything from the natural world, in stark opposition to the absence of ourselves … I became intrigued by the extraordinary qualities of new life emerging from the variously shaped husks of the seeds.

Susan Derges

Susan Derges lives and works in Devon, UK. She was educated at Chelsea School of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art, London. Derges began using photography and the camera-less techniques for which she has become internationally renowned during several years spent in Japan during the 1980s. Her work is in the collections of Victoria and Albert Museum, London; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Publications include Under the Sky (1992), Woman Thinking River (1998), Elemental (2010) and Shadow Catchers (2010). Derges was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Water in 2008.

72 73 What started as training for an expedition in Asia has become a daily ritual of introspection … this practice of observation has made me aware of my shifting thoughts and perceptions. I am a witness to the energy of the continent which keeps its people going and shapes their lives ...

Joana Choumali

Joana Choumali is a visual artist/photographer based in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. She studied graphic arts in Casablanca and worked as an art director in an advertising agency before embarking on her photography career. She works mainly on conceptual portraits, mixed media and documentary photography with a focus on Africa. In her latest works, Choumali embroiders directly on to each image. In 2016, she received the Magnum Foundation Emergency Grant. In 2017, she exhibited at the Pavilion of the Ivory Coast during the 57th Venice Biennale. Her book, HAABRE, was published in Johannesburg in 2016. She was named 2020 Robert Gardner Fellow in Photography by The Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, Harvard University. Choumali was named winner of Prix Pictet Hope in 2019.

74 75 Ode to Fern Valley

Here, I hear the Soque River flow below me. The birdsong above. Left. Right. A bee hovers close to last year’s leaves on which I sit underneath a tulip poplar that drops flowers from three stories high. Thank you. A breeze blows, branches flap. Trillium dance. A fly zips by. The sky blue like the breast of the bird overhead. At home far from home with Mother Nature in Fern Valley.

Janelle Lynch

Janelle Lynch is an American large-format photographer. Her most recent series, Another Way of Looking at Love, explores the interconnectedness of all life forms. Her photographs are in collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum and Museum of the City of New York. She has published three monographs, Los Jardines de México (2010), AIGA award-winning Barcelona (2013) and Another Way of Looking at Love (2018). In 1999, Lynch received an MFA in Photography and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts, New York. In 2003, she completed a Master Class with Stephen Shore at Bard College, New York. Lynch teaches at the International Center of Photography, New York and is represented by Flowers Gallery, London. Lynch was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Hope in 2019.

76 77 A landscape of foreboding: the North Wirral Foreshore is a Site of Special Scientific Interest located between the outer Dee and Mersey Estuaries. This site is an area of intertidal sand and mudflats and embryonic salt marsh which is of considerable importance as a feeding and roosting site for passing and wintering flocks of waders, wildfowl, terns and gulls.

Edmund Clark

Edmund Clark’s work often engages with state censorship to represent unseen experiences, spaces and processes of control in contemporary conflict and other contexts. He has published six books and been exhibited at the International Center of Photography, New York; the Imperial War Museum, London; and Zephyr Raum für Fotografie and Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, Mannheim. His awards include the Royal Photographic Society’s Hood Medal for outstanding photography for public service, the British Journal of Photography International Photography Award and, together with Crofton Black, an International Center of Photography Infinity Award and the inaugural Rencontres d’Arles Photo Text Book Award. Clark was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Power in 2012.

78 79 One of only two raised coral atolls, the landscape of Henderson Island in the South Pacific resembles the surface of the moon, with hundreds of plastic fishing buoys disturbing its surface, scattered like planets in a marine solar system.

Mandy Barker

Mandy Barker’s work involving marine plastic debris has received international recognition. In June 2019, Barker took part in the Henderson Island Plastic Pollution Expedition. She is a recipient of the 2018 National Geographic Society Grant for Research and Exploration and has published two books, Beyond Drifting: Imperfectly Known Animals (2017) and Altered Ocean (2019). She was nominated for the Magnum Foundation Fund and the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2020. Barker was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Space in 2017.

80 81 Peat, also known as turf, grows at a rate of one millimetre per year … One metre, ten centuries of slow-grown soil … Returning to my roots in this deserted landscape has been consoling over the course of these surreal weeks … A memory of our core existence, our bedrock, unyielding certainty in a very precarious world.

Awoiska van der Molen

Awoiska van der Molen is a Dutch artist based in Amsterdam. Her black-and-white analogue hand-printed images are abstract representations of anonymised landscapes. In 2017, she was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize and recipient of the Larry Sultan Photography Award. Van der Molen was awarded the Japanese Hariban Award in 2014 and a finalist at the Hyères festival international de mode, de photographie et d’accessoires de mode in 2011. Her first monograph, Sequester, was nominated for The Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Award in 2014 and received the Silver Medal for Best Book Design From All Over The World from the German Stiftung Buchkunst in 2015. In 2020, her third monograph, The Living Mountain, was published. Van der Molen was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Hope in 2019.

82 83 These photographs map environmental tipping points, from arctic permafrost melt in Alaska to land clearing in the Amazon rainforest. They look forward as spaces are remediated and reforested … Coronavirus is a clear lens into human interdependence …

Mary Mattingly

Mary Mattingly is an American photographer and sculptor. She is currently the artist in residence at the Brooklyn Public Library, New York. She founded Swale, a floating edible landscape on a barge in New York City. Mattingly recently completed a two-part sculpture Pull for the International Havana Biennial with the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de la Habana, Cuba and the Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York. In 2018, she received a commission from BRIC Arts Media to build What Happens After which involved dismantling a military cargo vehicle (LMTV) that had been to Afghanistan and deconstructing its mineral supply chain. With the US Department of State and Bronx Museum of the Arts she participated in the smARTpower project. Mattingly has been awarded grants and fellowships from the James L. Knight Foundation, Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, Yale University School of Art, the Harpo Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), Jerome Foundation and the Art Matters Foundation. Mattingly was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Water in 2008.

84 85 In isolation and reflecting on the gravity of events, I took the opportunity to turn my lens to the natural landscape … From the frigid sleep of winter to the fecund urgency of spring, these images are an affirmation of the complexity, wonder and resilience of the natural order in all things.

Edward Burtynsky

Edward Burtynsky was born in 1955 of Ukrainian heritage in St. Catharines, Ontario. His photographic depictions of global industrial landscapes are included in collections that include the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the Museum of Modern Art and the Salomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid and Tate Modern, London. Exhibitions include Anthropocene (2018) at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Water (2013) at the New Orleans Museum of Art & Contemporary Art Center. In 2018, Burtynsky was named Photo London’s Master of Photography and in 2019, was awarded the Lucie Award for Achievement in Documentary Photography. Burtynsky was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Water and Growth.

86 87 The deadly days of April in Iran

Abbas Kowsari

Abbas Kowsari was born in 1970 in Iran. He graduated in 1988 with a diploma from Shariati High School in Tehran, where he continues to live and work. Kowsari has worked for over ten leading Iranian newspapers, most of them now banned from publishing. He worked as the senior photo editor for Etemad newspaper in Tehran and currently works as the senior photo editor for Shargh newspaper. Internationally he has been published in The New York Times, Time magazine, Paris Match and Der Spiegel among others. His work is included in the collections of the British Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Kowsari was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Disorder in 2009.

88 89 All you have is each other. So, I turned to my very first guides, my parents with their combined 160 years’ experience of life, crisis, turmoil and joy. Who were they before I was born, and I asked them what forces drove them to dedicate their lives to trying to find better ways?

Alexia Webster

Alexia Webster is a photographer and visual artist whose work explores intimacy, family and identity across the African continent and beyond. In 2013, she was awarded the Artraker Award for Conflict Art and the CAP International Prize for Contemporary African Photography, and in 2007 she received the Frank Arisman Scholarship at the International Center of Photography, New York. Her work has been widely exhibited across South Africa, Nigeria, the United States, Europe and India and published in numerous international publications. Most recently, Webster travelled to Tijuana, Mexico, as part of an International Women’s Media Foundation fellowship and grant. Webster was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Hope in 2019.

90 91 Satellite-borne multispectral cameras … can reveal traces of toxic pollution, plant stress and other aspects of damage to the fragile ecosystem. This data is carefully analysed by scientists to measure the relentless destruction of the Amazon.

Richard Mosse

Richard Mosse lives and works in New York and Ireland. His work has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Barbican Art Gallery, London; and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. He is a recipient of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Shifting Foundation Grant, the Yale Poynter Fellowship in Journalism, the Frankfurt Biennial B3 Award, a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and a Leonore Annenberg Fellowship. Mosse represented Ireland at the 55th Venice Biennale. He has published six books, the latest monograph, The Castle, published by MACK, was selected by Teju Cole as one of The New York Times Magazine’s top ten photo books of 2018. Mosse earned an MFA in Photography from Yale University, an MFA from Goldsmiths, London, a MRes in Cultural Studies from the London Consortium and a BA (Hons) in English Literature from King’s College, London. Mosse was named winner of Prix Pictet Space in 2017.

92 93 In light of the present crisis, I think back to this photograph. It is emblematic of the technological obsolescence of the ‘yesterday world’, but which paradoxically seems to foreshadow the future, in the form of a confined world populated with screens.

Valérie Belin

Valérie Belin is a French artist, born in Boulogne- Billancourt in 1964. She lives and works in Paris. She was a student at the École des Beaux-arts de Versailles (1983–1985) and then at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Art de Bourges (1985–1988), she obtained the French higher national diploma in visual expression in 1988 and also holds a diploma in advanced studies (DEA) in Philosophy of Art from the Université de Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne (1989). In 2019, she unveiled her new series Reflection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Belin was named the winner of Prix Pictet Disorder in 2015.

94 95 A time of the jackals – in a desperate search of food, the jackals moved in closer to the neighbourhoods that were empty of people during the lockdown.

Pavel Wolberg

Pavel Wolberg was born in 1966 in Leningrad, USSR. He lives and works in Tel Aviv. He has had solo exhibitions at Museum Goch; Kunstmuseum, Bochum; Tel Aviv Museum of Art and Haifa Museum of Art among others. His work was exhibited at the 52nd Venice Biennale. He was shortlisted for Sony World Photography Awards (2011), Artist’s special residency – La Mairie de Paris (2006), Leon Constantiner Prize for Israeli Photography (2005), America-Israel Cultural Foundation Prize (2003), Ministry of Science, Culture and the Sports Prize (2002), The Gérard Lévy Prize for a Young Photographer (1997) and America- Israel Cultural Foundation Scholarship. Wolberg was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Space in 2017.

96 97 This is a strange time … There were days when anxiety overtook me, there were also times when my daughter’s presence gave me hope. Throughout history, calamities of various forms – disease, natural disasters, war – have threatened us. But in spite of that history, here I stand, now. I have to keep this little fire in my chest going, I think to myself.

Rinko Kawauchi

Rinko Kawauchi was born in 1972 in Shiga, Japan. She lives and works in Tokyo. In 2001, she was awarded the Kimura Ihei Award, Japan’s most important emerging talent photography prize, shortly followed by the simultaneous publication of three books, Utatane (Catnap), Hanabi (Fireworks) and Hanako, her personal study of a young girl. She has since published 21 books. Currently one of the most famed contemporary female Asian artists, she was a recipient of the 2009 International Center of Photography Infinity Award and was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize in 2012. She has held major solo exhibitions at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris; The Photographers’ Gallery, London; and the Hasselblad Centre, Gothenburg. She was shortlisted for Prix Pictet Space in 2017.

98 99 Artist Statements

100 101 Artist Statements

p14 Ross McDonnell p20 Philippe Chancel p26 Ori Gersht p34 Naoya Hatakeyama p42 Sohei Nishino p48 Benoit Aquin As the Covid-19 pandemic rages across America, the issue These images bookend my vast Datazone project as prologue A drop of blood falls towards a pool of milk. On impact, On rainy nights in Tokyo, Hatakeyama sets up a special I have been creating works which take movement and walking I started taking photographs two weeks after confinement of wearing face coverings to slow down transmission of and epilogue. From the black Nubian queens to the Xi’an the drop ruptures and penetrates the pure white surface, camera with a glass-plated front, which he built himself. The as their subject. For me, the restriction of movement caused began. At nightfall, I would escape from this seclusion, the deadly virus has become increasingly politicised in emperors, Sudan and China have both preserved remarkable triggering a reaction. The blood and milk begin to interact glass catches globules of water, which refract the foggy light by coronavirus has made me think hard about the true nature venturing out onto the city streets which had become the country worst affected by the coronavirus with many, vestiges of their glorious past. But the comparison stops and pull each other apart. The process is slow and almost from billboards and apartment towers: in every droplet, a of my work. Around four years ago I moved my studio to a sombre and austere. I went out to free myself from fear. This including sitting President Donald Trump, refusing to wear there: Sudan, split in half, is one of the world’s poorest seamless. The drop of blood gradually expands from its dark, little city. Elsewhere, he captures the banks of fluorescent small fishing town called Heda, in Izu Peninsula. Over the was back in March, when human contact was rare, and I let a face mask while in public. nations while China has a clearly-stated ambitions to become almost black, puncture hole, growing in symmetrical patterns lights in Tokyo’s stairwells and passageways, all of them last two months during the coronavirus pandemic, I have myself be carried away by the void. If I managed to take one While adoption of face masks is seen in the medical the world’s dominant power. that are reminiscent of cosmic mandalas or microscopic evenly spaced, soaring upward into the night, the world’s been going down to the sea every day and gazing at it. In the or two good shots, so much the better, for in many ways community as a vital protective measure in fighting the At the Meroë necropolis in Sudan, I found the mysterious flowers. As the blood expands it blends with the milk and most orderly constellations. Hatakeyama is drawn to patterns harbour where there are many big ships anchored, there are the scenes I witnessed seemed more often cinematic than spread of Covid-19, many people in the US have begun to and tangible trace of civilisation’s end. In China, I went to the deep reds gradually become lighter and paler, almost and intervals, the city’s hidden geometry. He has said that also fishermen staring out at sea, wondering when they will photographic. In any event, during each outing I would take a promote the idea that wearing a face mask is an impingement photograph the inevitable disaster that haunts a society disappearing towards the outer rim of the emerging patterns. everything in his field of vision reduces to three categories: fish again. few establishing shots in my head. On returning home I would on their freedom and their civil rights. trapped in a future boosted by artificial intelligence and These ‘blood mandalas’ are seductive and deceptive, visceral things standing up, things lying down and holes. Every day I have been taking pictures of the shadow of the recount to my son what I had seen, and our conversations These masks reflect both the street culture and the political totally dehumanised. and emblematic. Photographed at a very high resolution and ropes, which shift due to the force of the waves. I don’t know naturally turned to philosophical or metaphysical issues. moment in America as Black Lives Matter protests continue Then came the unthinkable, a feeling that the Earth printed to large scale they become imposing and physical, p36 Stéphane Couturier if I projected myself onto the little boats which are moored to Sometimes he accompanied me on these outings, since I following the police killing of George Floyd. This kickstarted had stopped turning as a result of virus and widespread simultaneously seductive and repulsive, vital and deadly. Planetary confinement has been experienced as a veritable the land by a single rope, or whether I was trying to capture wanted us to experience these intense, ephemeral moments the biggest social justice movement in the country’s history lockdown. The effects were felt on a planetary scale. For my Symbolically, blood and milk are deeply connected earthquake that has shaken our certainties and disrupted the signals of nature created by the waves’ fluctuation. In the together, to feel their weight and essence with our entire focused on bringing an end to structural racism in the nation own life, empty Paris has become a data zone, an afterword and highly charged. In Jewish tradition they are prohibited our mental and physical constructs. In a globalised city midst of the pandemic, my various thoughts of anxiety and beings – and so that he wouldn’t be reduced to experiencing and around the world. to my journey. from being mixed together since it is unethical to ‘boil that has become generic, this photograph of buildings in impatience manifested themselves as a line, and this echoed them via the web. I didn’t dare tell him that the world of Photographed in the Bedford Stuyvesant neighbourhood a kid in its mother’s milk’. In this body of work the Brasilia’s banking sector represents a world that has suddenly inside me like a sutra. before would not be coming back, that the spectre of the virus in Brooklyn, at a street vendor stall, these objects are a Left:Meroë, North Sudan scientific and the symbolic are fused together creating become obsolete. In photography, I wrestle with the idea of is obscuring the rise of the Technological Empire. time stamp and a memento mori of the 2020 pandemic Right: Chongqing China evocative imagery, which is both culturally emotive going back over the evolution of this medium, going back to Study of Anchorage in New York and America. 2019 and formally seductive. traditional techniques such as Cibachrome paper in the hope 2020 Lockdown Early April Series: Datazone of reactivating them. I seek to also reappropriate the history 2020 Face Masks Love Me Love Me Not 06 of the arts and revisit great artists such as Fernand Léger p44 Rena Effendi Series: Anton Bequii à l’aube de la montée de l’empire 2020 p22 Shahidul Alam 2013 and feed off their masterpieces. Creation is a permanent June 2020 marks the fifth anniversary of my move to Istanbul. technologique (Anton Bequii at the Dawn of the Repressive regimes have used the Covid pandemic to push reinterpretation; a hybridisation of what nature and history In my hectic global life, I have finally been grounded in my Technological Empire) p16 Ilit Azoulay through and enact laws which would have been unacceptable p28 Reza Deghati have inherited from us. favourite city. The past few months have given me a chance to My most recent project explores the history of female hysteria. in normal times. At a time when protest is dangerous and the Through a window, we see the wounded observation explore Istanbul more intimately than in all my years of living p50 Laurie Simmons Considered a widely diagnosed illness in the 19th century, the courts on vacation, making redress impossible, the draconian of our world and the absolute need for reconstruction. Nouveaux constructeurs #6 here. I set out to portray the city in crisis and confinement, Lockdown and quarantine have imposed a more intimate term has since been discredited as a medical condition, yet is Digital Security Act has been used to arrest artists, writers In other words, the nightmare and the dream. 2020 but what I found was a diverse social fabric where pockets of co-existence with my work, my props and my archives. For the still used colloquially and in the media. and journalists. There has also been a rise in extrajudicial hope and human resilience prevail. foreseeable future there is no escaping our circumstances or In the wake of social distancing restrictions, our ability to killings. The lockdown, while necessary, was ill thought The scream of a cracked window resonates endlessly to the p38 Matthew Brandt As a tribute to the multiple layers of Istanbul’s unique our homes, and for all the sadness of this unreal situation, move freely has become limited, and the boundaries that out. Provisions for those who work in the informal sector in confines of a world deaf to its incessant calls, as to its despair. These works were originally inspired by our cultural cultural identity, I have collected stories from ‘non-essential I’m starting to feel the luxury of no escape and fulfilled by dictate our nature of interaction have demanded a significant Bangladesh, whose families live day to day upon their meagre 2015 consumption of information through LCD screens – workers’, whose lives have been derailed by the pandemic. the closeness. The current climate in the United States – shift in my practice. Often my work involves fieldwork and earnings, had not been made. In trying to prevent possible computers, phones, tablets, televisions – and the illusion As they spoke to me, they related not just their fears, but Covid-19, racial injustice and xenophobic politics – have working closely with a team of professionals. One of the infection, they were pushed to certain starvation. As a famine p30 Ed Kashi of interconnectivity they provide by masquerading as public also their hopes about the future and ways of trying to adapt caused many of us to consider the fragility of life: how much most significant parts of any project is the research phase in looms, politicians and their cronies have been busy looting Volunteers with the Nutley Volunteer Emergency and Rescue spaces and democratising platforms for receiving information. to a new reality. From street vendors to magicians, barbers time we’ve spent on earth and how much time we have left. which I gather testimonials, stories and photographs that are food allocated for the poor. Journalists and whistleblowers Squad, responding to a 92-year-old Indian man who suffers The LCD screens depict elaborate crowd scenes, hand-drawn to dancers, hammam scrubbers to imams, each expressed Who and what we hold close – ethics, places, friends, family, later used in my work to reveal gaps in history. Nowadays, reporting these crimes have been beaten and arrested. The from diabetes and had lost consciousness, with resin on plastic and positioned between two polarised dignity in the face of hardship and a unique way of resisting objects – have taken on huge significance. given the isolation and quarantine, I am finding new ways of middle class, with salaries being cut and prices on the rise, in Nutley, New Jersey on 15 April 2020. This force, established lenses, acknowledging LCD screen technology which employs and overcoming their daily stresses. In his memoir Istanbul: My props have always been nearly as important to me working. Instead of building a repository of images based on has also had to adjust to a restricted lifestyle, exercising on in 1954, is a mix of 20 employees and 55 volunteers, similarly suspended crystal material. I pulled the imagery Memories and the City, Orhan Pamuk wrote: ‘If I see my city as my photographic artworks. I’ve spent endless hours my fieldwork, I now work with ready-made photographs from rooftops and socialising online, but by and large they face a responding to every medical call, including Covid-19 from various public gatherings – rallies, concerts, sporting as beautiful and bewitching, then my life must be so too.’ categorising them by type, material and colour, always with image banks and existing archives. very different reality. The hungry have been crying for food emergencies. Since the start of the pandemic they approach events – and used the resin to abstract the picture, while As I explored the various parts of this vast megalopolis the thought that they might reappear in my pictures. They In my research, I found over 5,000 ready-to-use images that in the streets of the well-to-do neighbourhoods of Gulshan, every call as Covid-related. Many town residents have been the distorting lines in the PETG plastic reference the static and connected with its inhabitants in their own microcosms, have had many lives, and I don’t want them anymore. I depict facial expressions of women in distress, or ‘experiencing Baridhara, Banani and Dhanmondi. Fake tests and unreported donating protective equipment, covering the squad for now. distortion of television sets. As a liquid, the resin shifts and their moods and feelings imprinted on mine. In this process, don’t want any of my collections of anything – cut-outs and hysteria’. The images were used primarily in advertisements. deaths mean that the full extent of the pandemic is hidden ‘There is a fear. A fear of bringing this back home to our settles in different ways, expanding until it dries, proving I began to embrace the city as my own in a way that I haven’t figurines, clothing and shoes – I want them to have a different I was led to question why such high demand for images of from public eyes. The price the nation will pay, will go well friends and family. A fear of getting exposed and sick. But to be a tricky and imprecise material. Just as the pixels of done before. future. I’m in the process of dumping them out on canvasses, women in distress even exists. Today we understand that the beyond what the virus extracts. we knew that we would have to be ready for anything when an image on an LCD screen are fluid and unfixed, the resin boards, tables – any rectangular surface that can hold them. concept of hysteria is rooted in a social construct of the past, we signed up for this. This is a game changer for all of us, is a suspended liquid, speaking to ideas around the fluidity Left:Hamam Scrubber, Metin Celik I love the tactility and physicality of pushing things within a system that seeks to maintain patriarchy. This project Artists protest against the Digital Security Act used to arrest whether you’re getting paid or volunteering, but we’re still in of information. Image and liquid interact to allow for a loss Right: Drag Artist, Ceytengri around, rather than the cool distance of looking through the opens up the possibility for a re-evaluation of hysteria in an artists and journalists during Covid-19. it and we’re going to win. It’s the passion and personal belief of control that further completes the image. Made five years 2020 viewfinder of a camera. I love making these objects tell their attempt to resist patriarchal culture. Dhaka, Bangladesh of helping others that keeps us going. It’s a huge sacrifice ago, these works have taken on new meaning since our Series: Faces of Now stories through placement and context. I’m excited about 2020 that we make so we can serve others in this unsettling and relation to crowds has shifted towards the unknowable. using up everything I’ve got. And then, at that point, I can Do you have Warning Symptoms? Series: Covid Protests unprecedented time.’ Jonathan Arredondo, President of the Through screens is how we now come together. p46 Joel Sternfeld start over again. 2020 Volunteer Association Despite receiving a disability cheque every month ever Series: What is the Matter? Where does it Hurt? p24 Gideon Mendel An emotional moment during the protests in New York LCD 70.1 since he suffered a stroke, Joe Conway is unable to afford It’s all I’ve Got (Walt Disney & Andy Kaufman) #1. Courtesy of the artist and Braverman Gallery My 2METRES project is a series of 104 masked portraits made City over police violence and the murder of George Floyd at 2015 an apartment. The rents are too high. He sleeps in the 2020 during the 104 days of lockdown on Ridley Road Food Market the hands of the Minneapolis police last week. Thousands Brooklyn Jay Street – MetroTech Subway Station and goes Courtesy of the artist and Salon 94 p18 Saskia Groneberg in London. came out to march and fight for justice and the vast majority p40 Robin Rhode to the steps of the Main Post Office in Manhattan as a night- A man in a jacket and jeans walks alone along a path lined Masks can signify many things today – anxiety, isolation, of protesters were peaceful and expressing their rights to free Robin Rhode engages photography, performance, drawing time safe space. p52 Brent Stirton with trees. The path leads through a circular opening in the social responsibility, fear or safety. Normally they are about speech and assembly. and sculpture in creating visual narratives that are brought to He has spent nights in shelters but in no case was the This image shows agricultural labourers harvesting crops while tree structure and then turns to the right behind it. You can’t blocking off from other people, creating distance and life using materials such as soap, charcoal, chalk and paint. shelter able to connect Mr Conway to social services that being segregated by plexiglass sheeting on the harvesting see where he is coming from or where he is going. Behind disguising identity. But in our ‘new normal’ this material Top: 8 April, 2020 Coming of age in the newly post-apartheid South Africa, could help him out of his predicament, primarily because machine. These workers are considered essential at this time the opening it is bright, you can vaguely recognise meadows barrier has become a unifier, holding us together. Bottom: 2 June, 2020 Rhode was influenced by the growing popularity of hip-hop, there were numerous other individuals ahead of him but because their work is usually done in close proximity and bushes along the path. In one picture, the man is right This market has been an East London institution since Series: Kashi Diaries film and popular sports on youth culture as well as the in priority. to each other, they are especially at risk for Covid-19. This before the opening – in the other, he already passed it. the late 1880s, encapsulating the area’s rich history of Courtesy of the artist and VII community’s reliance on storytelling in the form of colourful He continues to wear a face mask even while dozing presents a huge food security risk so labour management is Seeing the man from the back, standing in relation to nature, immigration and diversity. Today the market stalls, along murals. Rhode is best known for his photographic series off on the steps of the Post Office. His stroke and its constantly trying to find solutions for their safety. we immediately place ourselves in his position: where does with the food shops that line the street, attract shoppers p32 Chris Jordan that document a sole protagonist interacting with murals the consequences do not make it easy for him to get up if the path lead? Where do we go? The images are mysterious from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds, both recent I am in a new mode that is about breaking through what artist painted on public walls in Johannesburg and Berlin. In he fully reclines. He is softly spoken and uncomplaining. Agriculture, Immigrants and Covid-19 and profane at the same time; they do not evoke a particular immigrants and also many whose families have been in I think is the biggest and most unhealthy cliché that has the succession of photographs, the movements of the actor He just earnestly wishes for an apartment. His will to live 2020 place or time. The ‘Beginning’ and the ‘End’ are interchanged, the UK for generations. The area has also been facing permeated the art world for several decades: the notion that appear to alter the two-dimensional renderings, compressing is strong. Courtesy of the artist and Getty Images creating an endless story. many of the twin challenges of rapid gentrification and beauty is naïve and irrelevant; cynicism and horror are cool; space and time and transforming the urban landscape into How many others must be in similar circumstances? For myself, these photographs have become symbols for local issues of deprivation accentuated by the government’s and that art (and life as well) is a fundamentally intellectual a fictional storyboard. Melding individual expressionism this unknown time, for the isolation that we suddenly faced, austerity policies. experience. My aim is to reanimate nature photography as with broader socio-economic concerns, Rhode’s work Joe Conway for not knowing where we are heading. At the same time, they a relevant and legitimate art form. In this moment where reveals a mastery of illusion, a rich range of historical and 21 July, 2020 became a symbol for hope, that dark times always pass and Ridley Road Food Market, London bad news seems to be everywhere, I think it has never been contemporary references, and an innate skill for blending that there will be a time after the crisis. 2020 more important for us to collectively remember the beauty of high and low art forms. Series: 2METRES our world, and there is no medium more suited to carry that Left:Ende (The End) message than photography. Evergreen Right: Anfang (The Beginning) 2017 2015 Salar de Surire, Chile Series: The Geometry of Colour Series: Vesuv, Venus 2020

102 103 p54 Motoyuki Daifu p60 Chris Steele-Perkins p66 Edgar Martins p72 Susan Derges p76 Janelle Lynch p80 Mandy Barker In 2012, a year after the Great East Japan earthquake, Left together with an iPhone in the middle of a pandemic, What does it mean to represent and perceive places At the beginning of lockdown, I was caught in the middle of On 22 March 2020, as the coronavirus was infiltrating LUNASEA represents the amount of plastic affecting the I started the series of work, Untitled (Surround), that captured all kinds of strange things happen. You and the phone move photographically? How is it that the photographic, with moving home and studio to a new location. I managed the New York, I left the city with my view camera and a small unique environment of Henderson Island, isolated in the the ‘extraordinary’ in ordinary landscapes through a series together; and it is quite random what the software does to its limitations and potentialities, has the privilege of domestic part but the studio and all its equipment remain suitcase for an indefinite stay in the Appalachian Mountains middle of the South Pacific Ocean. The work responds to both of photographs of the residential area around my parents’ the image, I found it was impossible to repeat what you had ‘disassembling’ the appearance of the territory and, packed away, until the removal company is able to clear in the Southern United States. Marty and Glad Simmons, conflict and mimicry within the environment of this remote house in the suburbs of Yokohama City. Since then, created before. I feel as though the ugliness and randomness consequently, of inviting a broader, more emotional and their backlog. I felt ungrounded, in an unfamiliar place, and my partner Forrest’s parents, live there on a property they UNESCO World Heritage site, from the accumulation of man- I’ve continued working on this series. I moved to Tokyo of the imagery was a good metaphor for our paranoid Covid more intricate experience of its hidden meanings? How do without a regular daily work routine to distract me from the named Fern Valley. I had never met them before. While made plastic debris washed up on its shores. several years ago and this image was taken during the times. Fortunately, I don’t feel this way too often and there is places connect and configure themselves in accordance impending global storm, as we all suspended our normal lives these details may seem anecdotal, what they represent is One of only two raised coral atolls, the landscape of corona crisis in Tokyo in 2020. There, the ordinary has an element of self-mockery too, but sometimes it darkens the with social, political and ecological phenomena? These are and hunkered down into our separate ‘bubbles’. The sense of foundational to Fern Valley: a spirit of love, trust, courage, Henderson resembles the surface of the moon, with hundreds turned into ‘extraordinary’. spirit especially knowing that when it is ‘over’ global warming pressing questions for many contemporary visual artists isolation and distance was intense, so initially as a distraction, humility and generosity. of plastic fishing buoys disturbing its surface, scattered is still waiting to devastate us. for whom working on place and landscape involves an ever I began germinating a pack of mixed seeds in the warm and We arrived, and I got to work, determined to be generative, like planets in a marine solar system. The recovered buoys Untitled (Surround) #3 more necessary challenge: that of rendering visible and dark of a corner of the kitchen and became intrigued by the rather than despairing; to regard the place and time as the represent ‘moons’ in a blurred orbit of moving plastic and 2020 Self Portrait in the Time of Covid interrogating the ways in which space is appropriated and extraordinary qualities of new life emerging from the variously gifts they were. coral dust – a unique LUNASEA. 2020 transformed, and salvaging some vestige of the events, shaped husks of the seeds. They were so expressive of an Fern Valley is a sprawling, undulating property along It is intentional to mystify the viewer, making it difficult to p56 Munem Wasif dilemmas and reverberations wrought by history on the irrepressible and mysterious movement towards growth and the Soque River. It maintains an agreement with the local tell which images are plastic, or coral – in the same way that How do we quantify our lived experience and how do p62 Nadav Kander territory. Thus, reproducing, constructing and representing life that it was impossible not to anthropomorphise each one, government that limits further development of the land. plastic has the ability to mimic natural habitats and food, and numbers give meaning to life? Time ticks on at each moment Some occasions or occurrences in my life present themselves images of place also means scrutinising their physical, and regard them as sharing some of the essential qualities Thus, it is a place that both protects and is protected. so threatening the endemic species of Henderson. It is sheer and we age with numbers. Numbers are everywhere, we are in a way that, if not ignored, inform me as to how I tick, what is social and symbolic meanings. of other embryonic life forms, including ours. Amidst the newness and uncertainty, I walked by the LUNACY to expect that plastic will stop entering the sea, and surrounded by one hundred billion galaxies and we feel the fundamental to me. What it is I constantly strive to grasp and Produced over a period of two decades, this body of work This spring was incredible for its abundance of everything riverfront, in the gardens, up and down hills, across paths, regrettably ending up on one of the most remote, and once essence of the world with five senses or seven chakras. express. It has the effect of bringing understanding to what is reflects on the impact of three different pandemics and from the natural world, in stark opposition to the absence through the brush and bramble of the secluded sanctuary – untouched pristine locations on earth – unless critical action The lands of Bengal produce a countless number of rice intuitive. the subsequent travel and mobility restrictions imposed by of ourselves. I sensed that we also, in our mostly internal, my temporary home. I discovered native plants, trees, flowers, is taken. grains but the famine of 1943 took three million lives from At the point this lockdown began, I was no stranger to the Chinese government on the city of Beijing (SARS 2001, dormant states must be germinating all kinds of new birds and waterfowl. I allowed light to be my guide. the most fertile land. solitude and the effect it has on me and my practice as an H1N1 2011 and COVID-19 2020). impetuses to be brought into the world at the right time. The LUNASEA Numbers are even or odd, they convert individuals into artist. When we separated ourselves, I was very aware of visual rendering might be seen as an overly optimistic vision, Pendant 2019 collectives to fight against the odds. Numbers replace lives the feelings that arose in me from the forced distancing and Untitled, Beijing when all the evidence seems to point to an entire era coming 2020 with statistics, when millions of dead bodies during Covid shocked at how quickly my surroundings, which were until 2020 to a close, but life teaches us that where there is an end, Series: Fern Valley p82 Awoiska van der Molen contribute to an exponential graph. Numbers determine the that moment a safe place, became quickly alienating and Series: Achilles and the Tortoise something has to be transformed out of that energy. Peat, also known as turf, grows at a rate of one millimetre per fortune of millions of lives; perhaps only through patterns. unsafe to me. Another human being becoming a threat, an p78 Edmund Clark year. Here, we are looking at a thousand layers of peat. One Could numbers be seen as text or texture? Numbers remain enemy, a carrier of a deadly disease. I began thinking about p68 An-My Lê Seed Constellation A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) is an area deemed metre, ten centuries of slow-grown soil. in their own mystery of existence. the importance of touch to non-verbal communication and An ominous passing – a hospital ship slips almost unseen 2020 to be of special interest because of botanical, zoological or Due to cascading technological revolutions, our societies how the lack of it would produce a yearning for connection. beneath New York’s iconic Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. Courtesy of the artist and Purdy Hicks Gallery geological features that merit protection or preservation. have transformed enormously over the last two centuries. Numbers My knee-jerk reaction was to go to my studio and riff off these There are more than 6,000 in Britain. The formal notification Our bodies, however, have not evolved at the same pace. 2020 feelings, which I tried but then resisted knowing the knee jerk U.S.N.S. Comfort, Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, p74 Joana Choumali for a new site includes a citation of the subject of special Simultaneously, we have lost substantive contact with the in my case always results in work of little value. Brooklyn, New York ‘Alba’hian’ in Agni (the language of the Akan group in scientific interest and a boundary map defining the area. In natural world. Yet even as we are engulfed in this modernity, p58 Margaret Courtney-Clarke Weeks later I began again. This is work with the guts of 2020 Côte d’Ivoire), translates as ‘the first light of the day’, some cases these sites are literally fenced off. This mode of I believe that the human body possesses a deep internal Day 120 lockdown in Namibia. Nothing changes. Not in the solitude, melancholy and longing. I think of a quote by Rilke: Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery ‘the dawn’. Every morning Joana Choumali wakes up at classification of the environment reflects the discovery of memory, an unconscious instinct, that recognises when bigger picture. If I were able to return to the desert, I would ‘Love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes 5am to walk and photograph her surrounding landscape, knowledge whereby a new species, structure or concept is we are closer to the kind of place from which we stem: the still find Oryx with legs twisted in wires, held until their death. you.’ So many feelings are at play; feelings of isolation, p70 Maxim Dondyuk the shapes slowly revealing themselves, the streets and their defined or acquired, and given a place in our understanding uncorrupted territory of nature. Caught not just in a fence, but an entire system: a system distance and contemplation as well as a realisation that On 27 April 1986, people in cities and villages around people awakening. What started as training for an expedition of our landscape and ourselves. Often SSSIs are found on At the time of the worldwide lockdown I was still allowed that demarcates and divides space, cuts off the arteries of this time in history is bigger than just this virus. That it holds Chernobyl heard of a temporary evacuation due to an in Asia has become a daily ritual of introspection. As the former industrial sites, many dating from the 19th century, to go outdoors. I went to Bourtanger Moor in the North East movement that give access to water and resources, a system potential in its invitation to consider that this event is willing ‘adverse radiation situation’. Tens of thousands of people morning light at the beginning of each new day slowly makes a period when significant and related developments in of the Netherlands to photograph the last remaining area of that entraps and ensnares, that is strangling the environment, us human beings collectively to move towards balancing our left their homes with few belongings, assured by the every detail of the material world visible, so this practice of industry, colonisation, classification and photographic peatland in the Netherlands, which today is a nature reserve. its people and other living beings. A system imposed by indiscriminate use of nature’s resources. This is not a warped Soviet government that they would return in a few days. observation has made Choumali aware of the shift in her processes and techniques occurred. Taking a photograph My ancestors – traced back as far as 1600 – originate from those that came here from afar ... reality; it is just reality and it comes out of man being out of Unfortunately, most did not see their homes again. thoughts and her perception of realities. She witnesses the is an act of visual classification in its own right. The frame here. Returning to my roots in this deserted landscape has Here, following a seven-year drought, the greatest scarcity balance with nature. From 2016, I have been working on a long-term energy of the continent which keeps its people going and imparts significance to the elements organised within it, been consoling over the course of these surreal weeks. is water – making the simplest defence against Covid-19, that photographic research project on Chernobyl. This project shapes their lives – and notices changes in herself. a reflection of the cartographic border of a SSSI. Whatever I was looking at land that had grown steadily over a thousand of washing hands, a rare and compromising response. The Solitude-Quietude-Contemplation explores memory, territory, atomic energy and nature. What Walking is a recurring element in almost all her images, is chosen for organisation in the frame adds to the sum years: my guts, the intuition, reminding me of where we, whirlwind that whips up across the salt pan and throws men, 2020 began as a contemplation of the emptiness and silence in a clue to the artist’s quest to understand herself, like a of our visual knowledge. Extract from Scientific Citation the humans, came from so many years ago. A memory of our women and children into chaos at the water well exemplifies an abandoned territory became an exploration of the past pilgrimage. Afterwards, using a mixed technique of collage, North Wirral Foreshore is located between the outer Dee and core existence, our bedrock, unyielding certainty in a very the elemental and omnipresent forces that demand the p64 Nyaba Léon Ouedraogo that existed in the Chernobyl Zone long before the nuclear embroidery, painting and photomontage, she superimposes Mersey Estuaries. This site is an area of intertidal sand and precarious world. perennial search for water. In some of the harshest places In this new aesthetic, I have tried to reinterpret the perception disaster. Old films, family photos, postcards, letters – all had onto the photographs several layers of ethereal fabrics mudflats and embryonic salt marsh which is of considerable in the Kalahari Desert the resilience necessary for survival of the masks of Burkina Faso in the collective unconscious. been exposed to nature and radiation. and toiles. The long hours she spends sewing together the importance as a feeding and roosting site for passing and 1000 Layers, 1000 Years has found many forms – here voices heard across the sand My gaze diverts the power of the mind and the codes of For about two years, I was engaged in the search for different layers, and embroidering her motifs and drawings wintering flocks of waders, wildfowl, terns and gulls. The 2020 connect through an ancient calling. Singing the Rain is a form the body, pictorial material and temple of colour: Nyaba, the artifacts in the exclusion zone, for their restoration and onto the fabrics, have become moments of meditation. embryonic mixed salt marsh is formed principally from Series: Into Nature (work in process) of praying into being – an invocation arising from an inner colourist poses with pop tones. The ultimate sign of dialogue, creation of a digital archive. This project aims to contribute to What Choumali creates is not immediately visible in its common salt marsh grass Puccinellia maritima and glasswort spirit towards an outer manifestation. of transformation, the mask unites identities and forces in the rediscovery of Chernobyl, to show the remnants of lives entirety. As with her morning walks, the beauty and the Salicornia europaea, together with some common cordgrass The ‘shadow’ people, largely invisible to the outside world, perpetual motion in an artistic confrontation which summons and families that were lost. complexity of the artworks become visible only after a Spartina anglica. are scattered – interconnected through their dispossession the past and the present. process of discovery; a process that is reflected in Choumali’s from the land and the injustices of both past and present. This series of photography was realised in Ouagadougou 16 Photographic Research Project developing relationship with her own land. North Wirral Foreshore Despite poverty and the collapse of societal structures, during the confinement linked to Covid-19 from March to June 2016–ongoing 2020 they hold to traditions within which there is beauty and 2020 and was made in response to the containment of the Series: Untitled Project from Chernobyl New Normal Series: Sites of Special Scientific Interest the resilient spirit of individuals. disease. Yes, the body can be locked up by various means but 2020 the spirit must continue to create because the beauty of art Series: Albahian, 2018–ongoing Left:Singing the Rain, Selma Jacobs performs a traditional exceeds any physical suffering. Rain Dance across the barren Omongwa (‘Salt’) Pan. Although art is not therapy for Covid-19, in these difficult Aminuis, Namibia times, I want to say ‘we must resist, hold and advance’. Right: Entrapped In an attempt to reach a water source, an Oryx’s hind legs get twisted in the fence wires bordering Left:Comprenez-moi the Namib Naukluft Park, Namibia Right: Intime de la beauté 2019 2020 Series: When Tears Don’t Matter

104 105 p84 Mary Mattingly p90 Alexia Webster p94 Valérie Belin The effects of deforestation and habitat fragmentation from A few months ago, when a global force of change shook up This series, Pallets, was made in 2005 in the same sprit as the Prix Pictet extractive industries like mining, logging and intensive the world, I suddenly and unexpectedly landed up stuck in earlier ‘photographs of objects’, notably the ones of Venetian industrial farming contribute to speeding up climate change the city of my childhood, close to my parents for the first time Mirrors (1997), Crashed Cars (1998) and Engines (2002). and its deadly ramifications. Epidemics like coronavirus that in years. Freshly washed up in Johannesburg in the midst of a Photographed ‘on site’ in a studio set up in a specialist waste reach ‘naïve’ human populations (populations that haven’t worldwide pandemic, things felt familiarly unsettled, similar centre, these piles of ‘end-of-cycle’ electronic materials are been exposed to a particular disease vector) are in part to that anxious uncertainty of my early childhood during like contemporary vanitas paintings, and carry a strong moral. caused by drastic change of land use that animals depend apartheid. So, I turned to my very first guides, my parents, At the heart of this cemetery of objects, these piles give an on. As new roads are cut into isolated areas, animals are now a vulnerable demographic in this current crisis, and with idea of the reality of mass consumption, a process in which effectively forced out, and often end up in emerging urban their combined 160 years’ experience of life, crisis, turmoil objects become obsolete almost as soon as they roll off markets. Climate change effects such as forced animal and joy. Who were they before I was born, and I asked them the production line. The artist’s intervention was limited to migration or permafrost melt change the distribution of what forces drove them to dedicate their lives to trying to find simply selecting the pallets according to aesthetic criteria. pathogens that can cause disease. Epidemics don’t have to better ways? The composition, forming a repetition of similar motifs within be the new normal. Human healthcare systems need to be I spent afternoons during the lockdown sitting with a the same ensemble, is in no way the fruit of an ‘artistic’ buttressed, sustainable agriculture and land management mask on in their garden and interviewing them, sifting arrangement: it simply obeys the strict laws of classification practices must be supported, and alternatives must be through giant and dusty chaotic piles of family photos, and and gravity. developed for food security and livelihoods that do not rely sulking around their house with a projector and a bottle of In light of the present crisis, I think back to this photograph. on the destruction of habitats and biodiversity. disinfectant. Through this moment I created this incomplete It is emblematic of the technological obsolescence of These photographs map environmental tipping points, portrait of my parents. A collection of excerpts from their the ‘yesterday world’, but which paradoxically seems to from arctic permafrost melt in Alaska to land clearing in lives before I arrived in the world, before they became the foreshadow the future, in the form of a confined world the Amazon rainforest. They look forward as spaces are prominent academics I grew up with. This story leaves out populated with screens. As if there was some kind of remediated and reforested. As artists and communicators, many important successes and struggles that defined their underlying persistence there. connecting environmental degradation with the health lives, but in this time, when we have collectively been made of people worldwide has never been more important. to stay home and reflect on the worlds inside. I decided to ask Pallets Coronavirus is a clear lens into human interdependence the questions beyond their public lives and look at the quiet 2005 with a land base, water, the non-human life it supports, and violence and triumphs of the everyday act of living. humans need to protect. A couple in this lockdown – all you have is each other. p96 Pavel Wolberg During the virus lockdown I spent time in Hayarkon Park Left:Desire Lines: for Julián Carrillo Martínez, defender of the Contact Tracing located near my neighbourhood in the city of Tel Aviv. water, the forest and the wildlife in las Coloradas. 2020 I was photographing changes in the area. I noticed that 2019 a large number of wild jackals appeared in the empty park. Right: Remediating El Cerrejón: for Jakeline Romero who p92 Richard Mosse In a desperate search of food, the jackals moved in closer works towards environmental justice and clean water My new project, made in the Amazon rainforest, examines to the neighbourhoods around the park that were empty in Colombia in an ongoing struggle against El Cerrejón, sites and processes of environmental crimes through the of people during the lockdown. the largest open-pit mine for thousands of miles. prism of orthographic multispectral reflectance imaging. 2020 Satellite-borne multispectral cameras, capable of capturing Jackals take over Yarkon Park in Tel Aviv in search of food All proceeds go to Grassroots Global Justice Alliance. narrow bandwidth spectral data, can reveal traces of toxic during the Covid-19 lockdown. pollution, plant stress and other aspects of damage to the 2020 p86 Edward Burtynsky fragile ecosystem. This data is carefully analysed by scientists Humankind’s relationship to nature has always played to measure the relentless destruction of the Amazon, the p98 Rinko Kawauchi a central role in my work. Over the past 40 years, I have extent of its burning and logging, and to model projections of All images were taken during the Covid-19 pandemic, either investigated our collective stranglehold on the natural world. the rainforest’s destruction. at my home or a one-minute walk away. I clicked the shutter Now, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the global Multispectral photography is also used widely by farmers, button when I felt inclined to; I didn’t have a particular theme community is experiencing just how quickly those tables can mineralogists and land developers to detect the health in mind. But when I was making my selection for the ten turn. In a few short weeks, and for the first time in memorable and stress of crops, to detect water drainage patterns, shots, I felt that despite the constraints that were there, it was history, the world economy ground to a halt, with business- locate seams of rare earth minerals and map terrain for as if the pictures revealed a microcosm of the world itself. It’s as-usual suspended indefinitely. agribusiness, mining companies and other development intriguing how photographs have this power to drag these During my time spent in isolation and while reflecting on purposes. This is an imaging technology that lies at the crux notions from my subconscious and out into the open. the gravity of these events, I took the opportunity to once between environmental monitoring and protection as well as, This is a strange time, where we’re cautious about avoiding again turn my lens to the natural landscape as subject matter conversely, economic exploitation and ecocide. contact with others. And while there were days when anxiety – coming full circle to nature, where my career began back in These multispectral maps, showing sites of environmental overtook me, there were also times when my daughter’s the early 1980s. damage throughout the Amazon, were made with a presence gave me hope. Throughout history, calamities The result is a new series, titled Natural Order, made drone-mounted ten-band multispectral camera. I collected of various forms – disease, natural disasters, war – have during the time of year when the cycle of renewal exerts itself thousands of overlapping multispectral photographs captured threatened us. But in spite of that history, here I stand, now. on the Earth. From the frigid sleep of winter to the fecund above each site that were then composited using advanced I have to keep this little fire in my chest going, I think to myself. urgency of spring, these images are an affirmation of the photogrammetry and geographic information system (GIS) complexity, wonder and resilience of the natural order in all software. This data can be harnessed to pinpoint aspects Keeping the Fire Going things. I find myself gazing into an infinity of apparent chaos, of pollution and environmental damage on the landscape, 2020 but through that selective contemplation, an order emerges made explicit within each highly detailed image through a – an enduring order that remains intact regardless of our own reassignment of colour channels to specific bandwidths of human fate. (often invisible) light reflectance. My objective is to make these maps impactful and visually expressive, while carrying forensic Natural Order #1, Grey County, Ontario, Canada, Spring 2020 information about specific environmental factors of a cross Courtesy of the artist and Flowers Gallery, London / section of topographies, showing man’s wilful and systematic Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto destruction of the Amazon. p88 Abbas Kowsari Mineral Ship Cleric volunteers prepare a COVID-19 victim ahead of burying 2020 him on 10 April 2020 in Sari, Iran.

106 107 Prix Pictet

Advisory Board Jury (Hope) The Jury Process Hope Tour 2019–ongoing The 9th Prix Pictet

Lionel Barber Sandy Nairne CBE Sir David King The Prix Pictet maintains a worldwide network Victoria and Albert Museum, London The theme for the 9th Prix Pictet is to be announced Editor, Financial Times 2005–2020 Director, National Portrait Gallery Chairman of over 300 nominators who are briefed on the 14 November – 8 December 2019 by the end of 2020. London 2002–2015 Affiliate Partner, SystemIQ Limited theme for each cycle. In 2018, the portfolios of over Award and Finalists’ Exhibition Sir Peter Bazalgette Senior Strategy Adviser to the President of Rwanda 600 photographers were nominated, amounting Further details of tour venues may be found Chair, ITV plc Fumio Nanjo to over 4,800 images in total. An independent Hillside Forum, Tokyo on the Prix Pictet website prixpictet.com. Chair, Arts Council England 2013–2017 Director, Mori Art Museum Martin Barnes panel of judges (the jury), led by Sir David King 12 – 28 December 2019 Tokyo 2006–2019 Senior Curator of Photographs since 2010, reviews all submissions. The jury is Marcus Brauchli Victoria and Albert Museum, London charged with identifying photographic series Luma Westbau, Zurich Former Editor, Washington Post, Michael Nyman CBE of the highest artistic quality that presented 16 January – 9 February 2020 The Wall Street Journal Composer & Artist Philippe Bertherat a compelling narrative relating to the given Managing Partner, Pictet Group 1995–2014 theme. They are required to make no distinction Mouravieff-Apostol House & Museum, Moscow Christopher Brown Lord Palumbo between photography of different genres. 14 February – 13 March 2020 Director, Ashmolean Museum of Art & Art Collector & Trustee Jan Dalley At their first meeting they arrive at a shortlist of Archaeology, Oxford 1998–2014 Arts Editor, Financial Times 12 artists, whose work confronts the critical issue EPFL – ArtLab, Lausanne Ivan Pictet of global sustainability through photography of 4 September – 4 October 2020 Melanie Clore Chairman Herminia Ibarra high artistic quality and compelling content. The Founder, Clore Wyndham Fine Art Senior Managing Partner, Pictet Group Charles Handy Professor of overall winner is chosen at a second jury meeting, International Center of Photography, New York Former Sotheby’s Chairman of Europe and 2005—2010 Organisational Behaviour, London Business School held by tradition on the eve of the first exhibition October 2020 Former Co-Chairman of Impressionist and of shortlisted artists. Modern Art Worldwide Nigel Pleming QC Richard Mosse Palazzo della Gran Guardia, Verona Barrister Photographer, Winner of Prix Pictet Space 14 November 2020 – 17 January 2021 Régis Durand Writer & Art Critic Thaddaeus Ropac Jeff Rosenheim Further venues will be announced in due course. Owner, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Curator in Charge, Photographs Lady Foster London, Paris & Salzburg The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Ivorypress Ralph Rugoff Kazuyo Sejima Francis Hodgson Director, Hayward Gallery, London Co-Founder, SANAA Professor in the Culture of Photography Pritzker Prize-winning architects University of Brighton Sir Charles Saumarez Smith CBE Professor of Architectural History Maja Hoffmann Royal Academy of Arts, London Founder, LUMA Foundation, Zurich Princess Marianne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn Baroness Kennedy QC Photographer Principal, Mansfield College University of Oxford 2011–2018 Olga Sviblova Director and Founder, Multimedia Art Museum Dr Henry S. Kim Moscow Director, Aga Khan Museum, Toronto Sir John Tusa Fatima Maleki Trustee, Co-Chair, European Union Youth Orchestra Collector Former Chairman, University of the Arts, London

Richard Misrach Roxane Zand Photographer Former Chair, Sotheby's Middle East

Lady Myners Slavoj Žižek Chair, Royal Academy Trust, London International Director, Birkbeck College Former Chair, Institute of Contemporary Arts University of London London

108 109 Acknowledgements

Museums and Festivals (Hope) Galleries, Studios and Other Nominators (Hope) Agencies (Hope)

Victoria and Albert Museum, London Shahidul Alam Dennis Chang | David Clayton | Tim Delaney | Africa Europe Middle East Tristram Hunt, Director Rezaur Rahman, Drik Gallery, Bangladesh Pete Godsen-Phillips | Alwine Krebber | Roger Ballen | Rory Bester | Raphael Chikukwa | Alia Al-Senussi | Monica Allende | Basma Al Sulaiman | Peggy Sue Amison | Maya Anner | Martin Barnes Majority World Heidi Lightfoot | Catherine Philippot | Medina Dugger | Christine Eyene | John Fleetwood | Regina Maria Anzenberger | Karin Askham | Sena Çakirkaya | Levent Çalıkoğlu | Manuela Buttiglione Jane Quinn | Isabella Salvadore | Harry Smith | Joseph Gergel | Véronique Joo Aisenberg | Gerry Badger | Quentin Bajac | Simon Baker | Fariba Derakhshani | Elie Domit | Shadi Ghadirian | Sarah Jameson Joana Choumali Rob Stone | Dave Ward | Diana Whittington David Knaus | Stephan Köhler | Michket Krifa | Arnis Balčus | Sheyi Bankale | Christine Barthe | Tami Gilat | Isabella Icoz | G. H. Rabbath | Sarah Scott Nadira Laggoune | Jeanne Mercier | Azu Nwagbogu | Anne-Marie Beckmann | Ana Berruguete | Somayeh Rokhgireh and Ali Pooladi | Marta Weiss Margaret Courtney-Clarke Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi | Oluremi Onabanjo | Tobia Bezzola | Daniel Blochwitz | Daria Bonera | Khaled Samawi | Maria Sukkar | Sinem Yoruk Jean Butler, Shona van der Merwe and Sean O’Toole | Katrin Peters-Klaphake | Enrico Bossan | Sophie Boursat | Hillside Forum, Tokyo Lee Burgers, SMAC Gallery, Cape Town Rachida Triki | Roelof van Wyk Anne-Marie Bouttiaux | Emma Bowkett | North America Miho Odaka, Adviser Krzysztof Candrowicz | Chiara Capodici | Peter Barberie | Elisabeth Biondi | Phillip Block | Rena Effendi Asia Pacific Alejandro Castellote | Zelda Cheatle | Hans D. Christ | Joshua Chuang | Joerg Colberg | T.J. Demos | LUMA Westbau, Zurich Deanna Richardson, ILEX Gallery, Rome Shahidul Alam | Rahaab Allana | Bérénice Angremy | Zoë Christensen | Dirk Claus | Charlotte Cotton | Natasha Egan | Steven Evans | Merry Foresta | Anna von Brühl Françoise Callier | Christian Caujolle | Joselina Cruz | Jess Crombie | Luc Debraine | Richard Duebel | David Griffin | Virginia Heckert | Darius Himes | Friedrich von Brühl Lucas Foglia Brian Curtin | Devika Daulet-Singh | John Duncan | Maryam Eisler | Brandei Estes | W. M. Hunt | Karen Irvine | Deborah Klochko | Maya Hoffman Erin Wallace, Michael Hoppen Gallery, London Nathaniel Gaskell | Shigeo Goto | Yumi Goto | Chantal Fabres | Louise Fedotov-Clements | Eva Fisli | Adriana Teresa Letorney | Lesley A. Martin | Salima Hashmi | Michiko Kasahara | Shiho Kito | Andrzej P. Florkowski | Valérie Fougeirol | Stephen Mayes | Michael Mehl | Cristina Mittermeier | Mouravieff-Apostol House & Museum, Moscow Janelle Lynch Bohnchang Koo | Eyal Landesman | Gwen Lee | Lena Fritsch | Benjamin Füglister | Tamar Garb | Kevin Moore | Rebecca Morse | Alison Nordstrom | Christopher Mouravieff- Apostol Jiyoon Lee | Kevin WY Lee | Szewan Leung | Adam Goff | Anna Gripp | Francis Hodgson | Erin O’Toole | November Paynter | Jaime Permuth | Olga Sviblova Ross McDonnell Ryan Libre | Jean-Yves Navel | Elaine Ng | Felix Hoffmann | Genevieve Janvrin | Alain Jullien | Sandra S. Phillips | Jillian Schultz | Tatiana Makeeva Harumi Niwa | Lawrence Rinder | RongRong & Inri | Mindaugas Kavaliauskas | Klaus Kehrer | Paula Tognarelli | Sofia Vollmer de Maduro Gulnara Tiguleva Gideon Mendel Bittu Sahgal | Verónica Sanchis Bencomo | Hester Keijser | Sarah Kenderdine | Tanya Kiang | Farah Siddiqui | Sujong Song | Shane Suvikapakornul | Oliver Kielmayer | Simone Klein | Fabian Knierim | Oceania Les Rencontres d’Arles Ivor Prickett Mariko Takeuchi | Eugene Tan | Rudy Tseng | Marloes Krijnen | Evelien Kunst | Trish Lambe | Paola Anselmi | Daniel Boetker-Smith | Sam Stourdzé, Director Harsha Vadlamani | Ivan Vartanian | Harriet Logan | Vicky Long | Celina Lunsford | Rebecca Chew | Maggie Finch | Helen Frajman | Aurélien Valette Robin Rhode Belinda Winterbourne | Yuko Yamaji | Francesca Malgara | Rebecca McClelland | Jennifer Higgie | Nathalie King | Julie Millowick | Shona Alexander, Joost Bosland and Yan-Yan Yip | William Zhao | Li Zhenhua Antonio Molina-Vázquez | Manolis Moresopoulos | Jeff Moorfoot | Isobel Parker Philip | EPFL – ArtLab, Lausanne Cathy Duncan, Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town Stavros Moresopoulos | Walter Moser | Nat Muller | Anouska Phizacklea | Elias Redstone | Heidi Romano | Sarah Kenderdine, Director Galleria Tucci Russo, Turin Andreas Müller-Pohle | Philippa Neave | Moshe Rosenzveig | Geoffrey Short | Juha Tolonen | Giulia Bini Scheryn Art Collection (collector/lender) Moritz Neumüller | Laura Noble | Alona Pardo | Christine Tomas Nina Perlman | Timothy Persons | Benedict Philpott | International Center of Photography, New York Awoiska van der Molen Fiorenza Pinna | Ulrich Pohlmann | Phillip Prodger | Mark Lubell, Director Eva Brussaard, Studio Awoiska, Amsterdam Marc Prüst | Yasmina Reggad | Julian Rodriguez | David Campany María Inés Rodríguez | Mario Rotllant | Ida Ruchina | Alexia Webster Beatrix Ruf | Torsten Scheid | Carrie Scott | Palazzo della Gran Guardia, Verona Thomas Seelig | Laura Serani | Fiona Shields | Gabriele Ren Tamsin Silvey | Bernd Stiegler | Roger Szmulewicz | Francesca Briani Ingo Taubhorn | Anna Tellgren | Wim van Sinderen | Enrica Viganò | Dragana Vujanovic | Jean Wainwright | Artur Walther | Jeni Walwin

Latin America Marcelo Araújo | Fernando Arias | Gustavo Artigas | Daniel Brena | Eder Chiodetto | Ramón Jiménez Cuen | Clara de Tezanos | Elizabeth Ferrer | Elvis Fuentes | Tom Griggs | Roberto Huarcaya | Jessica Hubbard Marr | Nicola Maffei | Tobi Maier | Antigoni Memou | Mayu Mohanna | John Mraz | Elena Navarro | Thyago Nogueira | Gonzalo Olmos | Karla Osorio | Nelson Ramírez de Arellano Conde | Manuel Rivera-Ortiz | José Roca | Itala Schmelz | Itzel Vargas Plata | Ricardo Viera | Luis Weinstein | Trisha Ziff

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ISBN: 978-3-96171-324-0 Designed by: Library of Congress Control Number: 2020916233 Together Design Ltd

Printed in Italy by Lito Terrazzi 67 Orford Road London E17 9NJ Editors: Stephen Barber, Michael Benson United Kingdom E [email protected] Executive Editor: Isabelle von Ribbentrop T +44 (0)20 7631 4545 www.togetherdesign.co.uk Editorial Advisers: Georgia Brown, Fariba Farshad, Francis Hodgson, Arndt Jasper This book is typeset in Meta and Meta Serif. and Rosario Lebrija Rassvetaieff The pages are printed on Tauro Offset FSC 170g/qm and Galaxi Keramik FSC 200g/qm. Proofreading: Dr Suzanne Kirkbright, Artes Translations Cover Additional textual review: Gareth Bissmire Nyaba Léon Ouedraogo L’homme et la matiere Bibliographic information published by the 2020 Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.