Prix Pictet presents laureates Valérie Belin and Alfredo Jaar for inaugural exhibition at Paris Photo
Across the next editions of Paris Photo, Prix Pictet will present a curated selection of works by its laureates at the Grand Palais, demonstrating the quality and vision that the award has recognised in photographers since
2008. Over eleven cycles, Prix Pictet laureates have shone a spotlight on some
of the most urgent sustainability issues of our time, from the beauty and
violence of a destabilised climate to the pathologies of mass consumption and its cost to the natural world. In their own way, each laureate is a visual
storyteller who explores our shared humanity and the vast spectrum of ourinteractions with the natural world.
For the inaugural presentation, the winning series by Valérie Belin and
Alfredo Jaar will be brought into dialogue. Belin’s Still Life and Jaar’s The End draw respectively on the visual languages of still-life painting and landscape— genres traditionally associated with the evocation of natural beauty, but here employed to confront ecological catastrophe. Both series are visually seductive, yet depict a natural order displaced, distorted and threatened by human activity. They are images of extraordinary beauty, but also visions of environmental crisis on an incalculable scale.
Discover Alfredo and Valérie's series
Jaar has received numerous awards including the Hiroshima Art Prize in 2018 and the Hasselblad Award in Sweden in 2020. In 2024, he was awarded the IV Mediterranean Albert Camus Prize in Spain, followed by the Edward MacDowell Medal in Peterborough, New Hampshire, in 2025.
His work can be found in dozens of public and private collections, including The Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museu de Arte de São Paulo; Tate, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; M+, Hong Kong; and Tokushima Modern Art Museum, Japan. He became a Guggenheim Fellow in 1985 and a MacArthur Fellow in 2000, both in the United States.
Her work has been shown at international venues including the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015), and PHI Center, Montreal, Quebec (2014). Her work has appeared in several group exhibitions including A World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2014); Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow (2013); Nathalie Obadia Gallery, Brussels (2014); and Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York (2013). Among the collections that have acquired her work are the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Maison européenne de la photographie, Paris; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the National Museum of Contemporary Art Korea, Seoul.