Prix Pictet Photography exhibition

Amelia Collins

09 October 2012

The Prix Pictet Power exhibition opened at the Saatchi Gallery in London today.

On entering the gallery for the press conference I was blown away by the sheer power of the images in print. In this digital age it's easy to forget what is sometimes lost if we only ever  see images on a screen.

In Daniel Beltrà's Spill series the colours of the waters of the Gulf of Mexico are ablaze against the dark destruction of the oil spill, as though nature is fighting back before our very eyes.

Daniel told me that a lot of people question why he makes his images so beautiful, when they depict such devastation. His simple answer is, he doesn't, they just are - a fact that did not sit easily with him initially.

"Don't look away" is what he wants his pictures to say. Stories leave the news and are forgotten all too quickly. Governments and politicians forget their promises and move on.

Daniel thinks education is key "We live in a finite world, yet treat its resources as if they were infinite. We pollute the ecosystems we depend upon .. failing to heed the sobering lessons of the past."

The beauty of photography isn't such a worry for Carl De Keyzer. He said of his series Moments before the Flood that the beauty of an image from a distance lures people in and it's when they get closer that they are shocked. His photographs of defunct coastal defences around Europe suggest that calamity could still happen. "Europe is very cosy and comfortable these days, but maybe the environmental threat is bigger than the financial crisis?"

Joel Sternfeld's work speaks directly to Daniel Beltrà's concern that politicians and governments too easily walk away from making changes to the system that causes environmental devastation. When it Changed is a collection of photographs of the participants at the 11th UN conference on Climate Change. He says, " I went there wondering if climate change existed but most of the twenty thousand delegates were already considering the possibility that it not only existed but was about to become irreversible. I took photographs of the participants at moments when the horror of what they were hearing about ecological collapse was most visible on their faces."

From across the room these powerful expressions of horror caught my eye, but what I still can't fathom is why the memory of this emotion is lost to those with the power to make change. International climate negotiations are increasingly disappointing - I wonder whether we shouldn't post these images on politicians' walls so they can't forget the horror and can no longer fail to act.

In a time when documentary photography is, as Carl De Keyzer told me, confined to culture and art and lost to editorial work, exhibitions such as the Prix Pictet are more important than ever. 

These images are subtly bringing important issues to the public's attention in a way that is beautiful and palatable. Anything that makes such frightening issues accessible to the public can only be a good thing. 

As Kofi Annan, The Prix Pictet's Honorary President says of the human vulnerability portrayed in this exhibition, "the same forces that engender despair can also be the source of great hope." And that hope is the human race.

For more pics providing hope that we can save the planet take a look at our Clean British Energy photography gallery.

 Amelia Collins, Creative Communications team