Jungle | Twelfth cycle of the Prix Pictet

The world’s jungles are the great green lungs of the planet. These huge carbon sinks play a crucial role in regulating and helping to stabilise the planet’s climate. Yet across the globe jungles are in crisis - forests are threatened by deforestation, fires, and degradation; surface water has been lost; and rivers are increasingly disconnected and polluted. The implications of any loss or degradation of these densely interconnected ecosystems extend well beyond changes in land use.

Nothing in a jungle exists alone. They are complex interconnected systems that we only vaguely understand. The jungle is a place of mystery and secrets. It is a place of legendary lost cities and civilisations of economic adventures and many broken dreams. In this way, the jungle mirrors contemporary human environments more than we might expect. Cities, digital networks and social ecosystems have their own undergrowth: layers of complexity that obscure as much as they reveal.

Over the coming months the Prix Pictet’s global network of over 350 nominators will identify portfolios of work responding to the twelfth theme. 

These portfolios will then be reviewed by the award’s independent jury, chaired by Sir Tim Smit, and a shortlist of twelve photographers will be announced in summer 2027. 

How the Prix Pictet cycle works