British photographer Nadav Kander won prestigious Prix Pictet environmental sustainability awards
Last updated 11/4/2009 5:22:04 PM
Photo © Nadav Kander-Prix Pictet
British-based photographer Nadav Kander has been announced as this year’s Prix Pictet photography prize winner, while American photographer Ed Kashi won a special photography commission to Madagascar.
Nobel Laureate and former Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, awarded the £60,000 (CHF100,000) prize to Kander during a formal presentation at the Passage de Retz, Paris.
The Prix Pictet is an annual search for photographs that communicate powerful messages of global environmental significance under a broad theme.
This year that theme is ‘earth’. Nadav Kander was nominated for his series of photos, Yangtze, The Long River Series, 2006-07, documenting the rapidly changing landscape and communities of China’s Yangtze River, from its mouth to source.
The photographers were selected from a shortlist of twelve of the world’s leading photographers: Darren Almond, Christopher Anderson, Sammy Baloji, Edward Burtynsky, Andreas Gursky, Naoya Hatakeyama, Nadav Kander, Ed Kashi, Abbas Kowsari, Yao Lu, Edgar Martins and Chris Steele-Perkins.
Each year Pictet & Cie supports the work of a charity whose work mirrors the theme of the prize.
For 2009 Pictet & Cie is supporting Azafady, a UK-based charity and Malagasy-registered NGO for its Voly Hazo project.