DUBAI.- Ishara Art Foundation hosts Prix Pictet Storm, the latest exhibition from the world’s leading award for photography and sustainability, from 17 October until 13 December 2025. Prix Pictet was founded in 2008 by the Pictet Group with the aim to harness the power of photography to draw attention to issues of global sustainability. The exhibition at Ishara will be the first international iteration of Storm after it premieres at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London in September 2025.
The exhibition will showcase works by twelve photographers shortlisted for the eleventh cycle of the award. Storm is both a natural phenomenon and a metaphor for the unseen and relentless forces shaping our world today. As a theme, it speaks to the growing volatility of our age, encompassing environmental collapse, economic instability and social unrest, where we seem forever poised on the brink of the next crisis.
The theme challenges photographers to capture the raw energy and profound consequences of these turbulent times. Whether focusing on the devastation of climate disasters, displacement or the simmering tensions within divided societies, Storm reveals not only disruption but also the generative force within, the possibility of transformation, renewal and hope that emerges in its wake.
“It is a privilege to welcome the Prix Pictet’s Storm cycle to Ishara Art Foundation as its first international iteration, showcasing the deeply resonant work of twelve shortlisted artists whose practices engage critically with the climate crisis,” said Smita Prabhakar, Founder and Chairperson of Ishara. “This collaboration with the Prix Pictet is a true testament to Ishara’s ongoing commitment to presenting contemporary art that engages the public with the pressing social and ecological concerns of our time.”
“Prix Pictet Storm strongly resonates with the curatorial focus of Ishara’s exhibitions, as it explores the ever-present threat posed by climate change,” said Sasha Altaf, Director of Ishara. ”This topic is of utmost urgency in South Asia – the region central to Ishara’s mission and among the most climate-vulnerable in the world.”
“We are honoured to present the work of the twelve shortlisted artists at Ishara Art Foundation in Dubai,” said Stephen Barber, Chair at Prix Pictet. “For over fifteen years, our mission at Prix Pictet has been to showcase the best of global photography, focusing on the urgent topic of sustainability. The opportunity to tour and share this work with the public in Dubai is a privilege for us, and we hope the exhibition inspires reflection and hope in the face of uncertainty.”
The shortlisted photographers are:
• Takashi Arai, Exposed in a Hundred Suns, 2011–ongoing
• Marina Caneve, Are They Rocks or Clouds?, 2015–19
• Tom Fecht, Luciferines — entre chien et loup (Luciferines — Between Dog and Wolf), 2015–25
• Balazs Gardi, The Storm, 2020–21
• Roberto Huarcaya, Amazogramas, 2014
• Alfredo Jaar, The End, 2025
• Belal Khaled, Hands Tell Stories, 2023–24
• Hannah Modigh, Hurricane Season, 2012–16
• Baudouin Mouanda, Ciel de saison (Seasonal Sky), 2020
• Camille Seaman, The Big Cloud, 2008–14
• Laetitia Vançon, Tribute to Odesa, 2022
• Patrizia Zelano, Acqua Alta a Venezia (High Water in Venice), 2019
Takashi Arai methodically circles monuments and sites related to the nuclear history of Japan, USA, and the Marshall Islands capturing hundreds of 6x6cm daguerreotypes to produce a series of what he calls micromonuments. Marina Caneve’s Are They Rocks or Clouds? attempts to foresee a future catastrophe, a repeat of the floods and landslides that devastated the Dolomites in northern Italy in 1966. Tom Fecht documents Luciferines, cold-water plankton endangered by rising ocean temperatures whose bioluminescence occurs when millions of them are exposed to oxygen on the turbulent surface of the sea. Balazs Gardi’s The Storm chronicles the post-election attack on the US Capitol Building on 6 January 2021. Roberto Huarcaya captures an Amazonian palm lying on the bed of the Madre de Dios River on a 30m roll of photosensitive paper exposed by four flashes of lightning. Alfredo Jaar’s The End documents the Great Salt Lake, Utah, which is being destroyed by excessive water extraction and become what scientists have described as an ‘environmental nuclear bomb’. Belal Khaled’s Hands Tell Stories began while living in a tent outside the morgue at Nasser Hospital, Gaza after his house was destroyed, and documents hands that through their scars, their stillness, their grip on life, tell stories no voice could carry.
Hannah Modigh’s Hurricane Season charts the lives of those in southern Louisiana, capturing an atmosphere of living on the verge of eruption and a sense that uncertainty, fear and anger bubble beneath the deceptively calm surface. Created in a flooded basement, Baudouin Mouanda’s series recreates the 2020 lockdown floods in Brazzaville, Congo with those who experienced them. Camille Seaman’s series documents a type of thunderstorm called a supercell that can produce grapefruit-sized hail, spectacular tornadoes and clouds up to 80km wide and 20km high that block out the daylight and create an ominous space beneath. Laetitia Vançon’s series is a personal tribute to the resilience and quiet defiance she encountered in Odesa, Ukraine, a city of both strategic and symbolic importance. For her series, Patrizia Zelano photographed encyclopaedias, scientific treatises, and literary texts she saved from the waters during one of Venice’s highest ever recorded tides in 2019.
