EDITOR’S NOTE: Call to Earth is a NCS editorial sequence dedicated to reporting on the environmental challenges dealing with our planet, along with the options. Rolex’s Perpetual Planet Initiative has partnered with NCS to drive consciousness and training round key sustainability points and to encourage constructive motion.
Utah’s Great Salt Lake is retreating quick. It has misplaced 73% of its water and 60% of its surface area for the reason that mid-Nineteenth century as a consequence of extreme water extraction. What was as soon as a keystone ecosystem — sustaining rainfall and offering habitat for thousands and thousands of migratory birds — is now prone to disappearing utterly.
Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar has documented the unfolding catastrophe. His atmospheric images show shallow waters, naked floor and poisonous mud. He calls it “a lament for our dying planet.”
His sequence, titled “The End,” has received the celebrated Prix Pictet, a world award for images and sustainability.
In its eleventh yr, the award focuses on a completely different sustainability subject every version. This yr’s theme was “Storm.” Twelve works had been shortlisted and the winner, Jaar, was awarded 100,000 Swiss Francs ($124,000).
Michael Benson, director of Prix Pictet, advised NCS through electronic mail that storms have change into a frequent characteristic in many individuals’s lives. “It is the dramatic expression of nature’s wild aspect which is dramatically amplified by the dramatic disappearance of native species, the alarming lack of Arctic ice and the rising frequency of wildfires.
“It is also the defining characteristic of our age where we seem to be forever holding our breath in the anticipation of some unspeakable horror to come.”
The theme was taken actually by photographers with works spotlighting the pure phenomenon of storms and more and more frequent excessive climate occasions. Italian photographer Marina Caneve seemed on the long-term affect of the floods and landslides that devastated the Dolomites in northern Italy in 1966, and the inevitability of future catastrophes. While US-born Camille Seaman photographed supercell thunderstorms that may produce hail the dimensions of grapefruits.
There had been additionally extra metaphorical realizations of “storm,” with representations of political upheaval or social unrest. For occasion, Hungarian photographer Balazs Gardi’s highly effective chronicle of the post-election assault on the US Capitol constructing on January 6, 2021.
“Images of social divisions arise out of issues of sustainability,” mentioned Benson. “For example, as people are forced from their homes by rising water levels or intense heat, migration increases which in turn gives rise to division and social discord with which we are all too familiar today.”
While many of the shortlisted works show devastation, displacement and social dysfunction, they’re additionally a potential device for change.
“We have become increasingly numb to the problems caused by the global climate crisis,” mentioned Benson. “These pictures lower by that numbness, transfer the controversy past language and convey the pressing want for motion.
The shortlisted works are being exhibited at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, from as we speak till October 19, 2025.