Richard Mosse Wins Prix Pictet 2017 for Space-Themed Photography

The seventh edition of the Prix Pictet, titled Space, awarded the 100,000 Swiss franc prize to Irish photographer Richard Mosse. His winning series uses a military thermal camera capable of detecting human body heat from 30 kilometers away, transforming refugee camp tents into military targets to highlight the invisible war civilians endure. The exhibition, held in Turin, explores space as a dwindling resource on a planet heading toward 9 billion inhabitants in three decades. Other featured artists include Michael Wolf, whose Tokyo Compression captures suffocating commuters at Japan's busiest railway station (3.5 million daily passengers); Benny Lam, documenting Hong Kong's extreme living conditions; Sergey Ponomarev, following Ukrainian and Syrian refugees; Sohei Nishino, creating Diorama Maps of Tokyo from memory; Thomas Ruff, abstracting Martian deserts in his ma.r.s. series; and Mandy Barker, photographing nano-plastics as a new toxic plankton invading marine spaces.