TOP US photographer Sally Mann has won the prestigious Prix Pictet prize for photography and sustainability, receiving a cash prize of £82,000.
Mann’s winning series Blackwater (2008-2012) explores the devastating wildfires that enveloped the Great Dismal Swamp in southeastern Virginia, where the first slave ships docked in America. ‘The fires…seemed to epitomise the great fire of racial strife in America – the Civil War, emancipation, the Civil Rights Movement, in which my family was involved, the racial unrest of the late 1960s and most recently the summer of 2020,’ she explained. ‘Something about the deeply flawed American character seems to embrace the apocalyptic as solution.’
The theme of this year’s Prix Pictet was Fire, and the shortlist included top Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi, and South African wildlife specialist Brent Stirton,…
