Prix Pictet: Disorder

About

Our times are defined by disorder. Our mastery over manifold aspects of life has deluded us into thinking that we have bent the planet to our will. Yet the fragility of that assumption is exposed with each new pandemic, earthquake, tsunami or drought. With each passing day our illusion of order is shattered.

The Kunstverein is pleased to present the sixth exhibition cycle of the Prix Pictet entitled Disorder in Hamburg. Social chaos, political uprisings, climate disruption - these signs of disorder are pressing problems of our time. Disorder is the theme of the sixth Prix Pictet exhibition cycle and is the core focus of the works by the twelve exhibiting photographers. The spectrum of photographic negotiation ranges from documentary to abstraction and poetic observation. Centred around the theme ‘Disorder’, the exhibition features work by the twelve shortlisted photographers who are Ilit Azoulay (Israel), Valérie Belin (France), Matthew Brandt (United States), Maxim Dondyuk (Ukraine), Alixandra Fazzina (United Kingdom), Ori Gersht (Israel), John Gossage (United States), Pieter Hugo (South Africa), Gideon Mendel (South Africa), Sophie Ristelhueber (France), Brent Stirton (South Africa) and Yang Yongliang (China).

Founded in 2008 by the main bank of the Swiss private bank Pictet & Cie, the Prix Pictet is the world’s leading prize for photography and sustainability. Its mission is to find outstanding photographic works that convey a societal and environmentally relevant message of special significance. The five previous laureates were Benoît Aquin, Nadav Kander, Mitch Epstein, Luc Delahaye and Michael Schmidt.

After Hamburg, the exhibition of the shortlisted images will continue to tour the world, travelling to major international museums and galleries including The Palau Robert, Barcelona and the Museum of Photographic Art, San Diego.

The shortlisted artists of the sixth cycle of the Prix Pictet are:

Ilit Azoulay
Imaginary Order
Ilit Azoulay received her BFA (1998) and MFA (2010) from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem. Her works have been featured in solo exhibitions in Kunst-Werke Berlin (2014) and the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art (2014). In 2014, she was nominated for the Rencontres d’Arles Discovery Award. Azoulay’s works are held in numerous museum collections, including Centre Pompidou, Paris; Podesta Collection, Washington DC; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art. Recent publications are Finally without End (Sternberg Press), an artist monograph, and Shifting Degrees of Certainty (Spector Books), following her exhibition at Kunst-Werke Berlin. She lives and works in Tel Aviv-Jaffa.

Valérie Belin
Still Life
Valérie Belin trained at the École Nationale Superieure d’Art de Bourges from 1983 to 1988, before studying the philosophy of art at the Université Panthéon-Sorbonne in Paris. Belin’s work has been shown internationally in museums and galleries including the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015); Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow (2013); Nathalie Obadia Gallery, Brussels (2014) and Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York (2013). Her work has featured in group exhibitions including A World of its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2014). Amongst the collections that have acquired her work are the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris; The Museum of Modern Art, New York and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul.

Matthew Brandt
Honeybees
Matthew Brandt obtained his MFA from the University of California in Los Angeles in 2008. His solo exhibition Matthew Brandt: Sticky/Dusty/Wet was exhibited at Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art in 2014 and previously Columbus Museum of Art in 2013. Additional solo exhibitions have shown at Yossi Milo Gallery, New York (2014, 2012), Galerie Praz-Delavallade, Paris (2014) and M+B Gallery, Los Angeles (2013), amongst others. Brandt has featured in group exhibitions including Light Paper, Process: Reinventing Photography, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (2015) and What is a Photograph?, International Center of Photography, New York (2014). His work appears in collections including The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Maxim Dondyuk
Culture of the Confrontation
Maxim Dondyuk is a freelance documentary photographer who has focused on creating and promoting his own documentary projects since 2010, having previously worked as photojournalist for the Ukrainian media. He was named as one of Magnum Photos’ ‘30 Under 30’ emerging documentary photographers, is the winner of the Ville de Perpignan Rémi Ochlik Award and finalist of both the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography and the FotoEvidence Book Award. Dondyuk collaborates with many international editions and online media. His photos have been published in Time Magazine, Der Spiegel, Stern, Paris Match, Rolling Stone, Bloomberg Businessweek, Russian Reporter and Libération,
among others. He also works in cooperation with international organisations, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

Alixandra Fazzina
A Million Shillings – Escape from Somalia
Alixandra Fazzina’s photography focuses on under-reported conflicts and the often forgotten humanitarian consequences of war. She began her career as a war artist in Bosnia while studying fine art. She has since worked independently as a photojournalist throughout Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Fazzinaʼs reportages have been widely published in the British and international press and her photographs exhibited worldwide. In 2008, she was a finalist in the CARE Award for Humanitarian Reportage and the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography for her work in Somalia, and recipient of the Vic Odden Award from the British Royal Photographic Society.

Ori Gersht
Blow Up
Ori Gersht solo exhibitions include History Repeating, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2012); This Storm Is What We Call Progress, Imperial War Museum, London (2012) and Lost in Time, Santa Barbara Museum of Art (2011). His work has been featured in group shows including Revelations: Experiments in Photography, Science Museum, London (2015); Seduced by Art: Photography Past and Present, National Gallery, London (2012); Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010) and In Focus: Still Life, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (2010). His photographs are held in the collections of The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Tate Gallery, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

John Gossage
Should Nature Change
John Gossage’s photographs have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions over the past four decades, including Berlin in the Time of the Wall, Galerie Zulauf, Freinsheim (2005); The Pond, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC (2010) and Three Routines, Art Institute of Chicago (2014). Gossage is well-known for his photobooks including The Pond (1985), There and Gone (1997), The Secrets of Real Estate (2008), Who Do You Love (2014), Nothing (2014) and pomodori a grappolo (2015). Gossage received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012. His work is represented in collections including: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Library of Congress, Washington DC; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris; and National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

Pieter Hugo
Permanent Error
Pieter Hugo is a photographic artist living in Cape Town. Hugo’s work has been exhibited internationally, with numerous solo shows at major museums including Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne; Ludwig Múzeum, Budapest; Fotografiska, Stockholm; MAXXI, Rome and the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, among others. His work is represented in prominent public and private collections, among them, The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and The J. Paul Getty
Museum, Los Angeles.

Gideon Mendel
Drowning World
Gideon Mendel has worked for many of the world’s leading magazines including National Geographic, Fortune, Condé Nast Traveller, GEO, The Independent, The Guardian Weekend, Stern and Rolling Stone. He has also undertaken projects with campaigning organisations including The Global Fund, Médecins Sans Frontieres, Treatment Action Campaign, the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, ActionAid, Shelter and UNICEF. His publications include A Broken Landscape: HIV & AIDS in Africa (2001). Mendel’s work has attracted numerous awards including the W. Eugene Smith Grant for Humanistic Photography, six World Press Photo Awards and the Amnesty International Media Award for Photojournalism.

Sophie Ristelhueber
Eleven Blowups
Born in 1949, French artist Sophie Ristelhueber uses photography to create artworks that play with the material and the format of the image, its status, its framework and it installation in space. Her work has been exhibited in numerous international institutions, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; The Power Plant, Toronto; Tate Modern, London and the Imperial War Museum, London. She has been involved in exhibitions at the Johannesburg Biennale, Sao Paulo Biennial, Triennial of Echigo-Tsumari, Les Rencontres d’Arles and in Paris, Centre Pompidou, Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Musée Zadkine and Musée Rodin.

Brent Stirton
A Violation of Eden
Brent Stirton’s work has been published by National Geographic, Time Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, GEO, Newsweek, The Sunday Times Magazine, Le Figaro, CNN, amongst other respected titles. He works with organisations including the Global Business Coalition on HIV/Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the World Wide Fund for Nature and Human Rights Watch. Stirton has received multiple awards from bodies including the Unicef Photographic Awards and the Sony World Photography Award. He has won the Wildlife Photojournalist of the Year Award from the British Natural History Museum on two occasions and the National Magazine Award for his work in the Congo for National Geographic.

Yang Yongliang
Artificial Wonderland
Yang Yongliang graduated with a major in visual communication from China Academy of Art in 1999. He began experimenting with contemporary art in 2005, using varied media in his practice including photography, painting, video and installation. Yang’s work has been exhibited at the Moscow Biennale, the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne among others and is collected by public institutions such as the British Museum, London, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.