Magnificent, monstrous clouds choke the sky. Even the sun is suffocated by the volatile energy of supercell thunderstorms, harbingers of chaos capable of discharging hailstones the size of grapefruits and expanding to 80km wide and 20,000 metres high. Photographer Camille Seaman became a storm chaser in 2008 and spent several years capturing these titanic tempests on camera. “Yond same black cloud, yond huge one, looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor,” Trinculo warned in The Tempest. Seaman’s spectacular images are certainly Shakespearean in their sublime magnitude, an awesome warning that kicks off the Prix Pictet’s 2025 show.
Seaman’s series, The Big Cloud, interprets the theme – storm – literally, but others among the 12 shortlisted artists take it in different directions, from nuclear bombsites to copulating plankton. Several projects focus on American stories, shifting attention to the decisive role global powers play in the current geopolitical crisis and the disastrous consequences for landscapes and people.
Alfredo Jaar’s elegy to the dying Great Salt Lake in Utah takes you on a poetic journey to the vanishing environment, its destruction accelerated by excessive water extraction, polluting the surrounding air, destroying habitats and wreaking havoc on the local economy. Hannah Modigh’s Hurricane Season is an attempt to trace the psychological impact of the threat of annual hurricanes on communities in southern Louisiana, finding parallels between the weather conditions and the state’s long history of poverty, violence and racism.
