By
Lonnie Burstein Hewitt. Photos by Maurice Hewitt.
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| Luciérnaga (Firefly) by Yael MartÃnez (Taxco, Mexico). |
This is part of the large glittery series that
may first command your attention as you enter the gallery. The photographer calls
it an essay on the resilience of those who have gone through violence and
trauma in Mexico and Latin America. He made pinpricks in each photograph and
shone light through the holes to show how we as human beings can transform
terrible situations, changing darkness into light. “I believe that when
photography engages with education, culture, and politics, we can create a
better world,” he writes.
Prix
Pictet.
I’d never heard the name before but now I know it’s “the world’s leading award
for photography and sustainability” and this is its 10th cycle of
offering awards, each time with a different theme.
Photographers
must be nominated by one of the 300-plus curators, critics, and visual arts
specialists in the Prize’s network, and each submission must be a series of
photographs that in some way addresses the fragile state of our planet and the
current theme. An independent jury then selects a shortlist of those they
consider most compelling, and after the shortlisted pieces have been seen in an
exhibition, a winner is chosen and given a large cash prize in Swiss Francs.
All
the shortlisted works then go on a worldwide tour, and there’s only one North
American site included: MOPA, the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park, which
is now part of SDMA (San Diego Museum of Modern Art) and the last stop on the
tour.
So
lucky San Diegans will be able to admire the work of 12 brilliant visual
storytellers at MOPA through December 15th. What follows is only a
small taste of what you’ll see there… and you’ll get a free catalog too.
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| Jannat by Gauri Gill |
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| Urma & Nimli by Gauri Gill |
Two photographs from Notes from the Desert
by Gauri Gill (New Delhi, India). She was announced as the winner of
the 10th Prix Pictet in September 2023, when the exhibition opened at
the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. "To live poor and landless in the desert amounts to an inescapable reliance on oneself, on each other and on nature," she wrote in her artist's statement. We were mesmerized by the unusual mirror image and the
upside-down portrait of two very young girls.
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| Richard Renaldi |
Richard Renaldi, the only American in the exhibition, happened to be
at MOPA when we were there. Born in Chicago and based in New York City, his Disturbed
Harmonies series refers to “troubled men in a troubled world” and his
desire to “pull men back into parallel with the natural world.” In the images
here, he placed an old man he met in Turkey and a tattooed West Village New
Yorker in touch with nature.
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| Hoda Afshar |
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| Hoda Afshar |
Two images from Speak the Wind by Hoda Afshar (born
in Tehran, Iran; based in Melbourne, Australia). In the local culture of
islands off the southern coast of Iran, the winds are considered harmful, the cause
of disease and other afflictions, so traditional leaders speak to the wind in
tongues to negotiate its departure. These images don’t reference those
interactions, but they certainly grabbed our attention.
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| Vanessa Winship |
A riveting portrait of young girls in lace-collared uniforms by Vanessa
Winship (based in Folkestone, U.K. and Mandritsa, Bulgaria) from her series
Sweet Nothings: Schoolgirls from the Borderlands of Eastern Anatolia.
Life is difficult in those parts, and these two girls, part of a government
campaign to get more girls into schools, don’t seem to be enjoying their
moment.
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| Siân Davey |
Lila, a child in The Garden, a series by Siân
Davey (based in Devon, U.K), who photographed people in their surrounding
community that she and her son met over the wall of their backyard garden. “As
the flowers opened, they called in…mothers and daughters, grandparents, the
lonely, the marginalized, teenagers, new lovers, the heartbroken,” she writes.
“The Garden became…a metaphor for the human heart.”
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| Ragnar Axelrod |
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| Ragnar Axelrod |
Two untitled images by Ragnar Axelrod, born and based in
Iceland, from his series Where the World is Melting. “In the
regions around the Arctic, change is happening more quickly than anywhere on
earth,” he writes. “Sea ice and glaciers are melting fast,
and…thousand-year-old traditions of hunter societies are on the decline…Now the
glaciers are retracting, the Siberian tundra is thawing, and wildfires are
raging…Where there is life, there is hope, and people living in the Arctic must
have that hope…There are opportunities and solutions. We must never forget
that.”
Prix
Pictet HUMAN at
MOPA@SDMA
On
view through December 15, 2024.
1659
El Prado in Balboa Park
HOURS:
Thursday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.
(Hours may change during holidays and special
events)
Admission:
Pay what you wish.
INFO@SDMART.com
Lonnie Burstein Hewitt is an award-winning
author/lyricist/playwright who has been writing about arts and lifestyles in
San Diego County for over a dozen years. You can reach her at hew2@sbcglobal.net
