The exploration of human existence and all its facets is a subject often grappled with in art, yet arguably one of the most challenging.

"To me, being human has something to do with collapsing the boundaries between you and me, so that we can realize our profound interdependence and the myriad threads that connect us indivisibly," encapsulated this sentiment Indian photographer Gauri Gill, named the recipient of the Prix Pictet Human award.

As the world’s leading award for photography and sustainability, Prix Pictet, which was founded in 2008 by the Pictet Group to harness the power of photography to draw attention to the critical issue of global sustainability, presented its 10th cycle of the award, "Human" and arrived to Istanbul's one of the prominent art galleries Arter, showcasing the work of 12 outstanding photographers shortlisted for the award, following its inaugural display at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

Of course, as the award winner, in Gill's works, some things are unsettling and grotesque, and so much about life. The community of people living on the margins, which is especially the main subject of her photographs, actually conveys a different message about being human. According to Gill, this is the price this community pays for the mainstream to live like this. At the same time, in the photographs, we are talking about a community that is completely integrated with nature: an old father lying on his deathbed, probably a very close moment to his death, accompanied by his grandson, and a woman posing with almost imperceptible unity among the tree branches as she tries to gather fruits for her donkey. Particularly striking for me is the eerie prophetic pose of the child playing with a plastic bag on his head.

Gill’s work emphasizes her belief in working with and through community in what she calls "active listening." For more than two decades, she has been closely engaged with communities in the desert of western Rajasthan, Northern India, and for the last decade, she has been with Indigenous artists in Maharashtra.

"The communities that my friends belong to are defined by identity. For instance, I work within Muslim communities with very small landholdings who must migrate for work and who would be defined in those new contexts by their religion first and foremost, with nomadic Jogi people who are the ancestors of the Roma people in Europe and are cast as perennial outsiders to both urban and rural settler communities; and with Bishnois, who are deeply connected to the earth and its ecology, of which they see themselves as protectors. Across these identities, there is also the overarching net of gender inequity, which cuts across both caste and class to ossify the strata further," she explained.

Gill highlights the exploration of the power dynamics inherent in representation and the imperative to amplify voices often overlooked by mainstream discourse.

"In India, as perhaps elsewhere too, these are deeply hidebound realities that might take generations to escape, and perhaps escape is not the word, mitigate would be more accurate. One’s own community can be reassuring as well as stifling. People are locked into their places in the hierarchy and much of life is spent trying to exert and accomplish little acts of self-assertion and freedom. In my own work, I am interested in these very acts of agency and negotiation, and fundamentally, hope in dire circumstances – instead of drowning, how people continually find ways to stay afloat, to try and prevail, to resist defeat. For instance, when people’s mud homes were destroyed in a devastating flood, I did not want to depict them as weeping in the ruins. But I returned to those spaces some days later with my young adolescent friends, who came up with spontaneous scenarios to divert themselves – holding up freshly laid eggs, or an eagle-shaped empty bottle of rum, or playing dress up as solemn bride and bridegroom. To me, these are small acts of defiance and beauty against unbearable loss," she said.

As Prix Pictet aims to foster a deeper understanding of our shared humanity, Gill's winning series contributes to this goal in this manner: "I never thought of my work in quite these terms, but if I were to reflect upon it, I hope that my work helps us come outside of our limited selves to learn from people at the margins, or frontiers – in this case, those who live in the extreme geography of the Thar desert in small and imperiled groups, and to try and honor their experience. They are the ones paying the actual price for the follies of humankind so far, and for the privileged lives many of us who inhabit the centers have. In the darkest of moments, I observed resistance through humor and creativity and marveled at a gritty resilience."

In Gill's photographic practice, she transcends mere documentation, striving instead to provoke reflection and incite action on urgent environmental issues.

"Well, one of the things that photography can address is to make it visible. The world today is more unequal than ever, and we exist in bubbles of privilege – be it the urban middle classes, the upper castes, the corporate elite, the patriarchy, or even the art world. All those who live outside of these bubbles are wilfully invisibilised. One of the things that photography can address is to make visible," she said.

"The environment debate must keep humans at its heart and cannot evade the inequality of the current world order. For instance, the North-South debate on climate change. For developed countries to tell poor countries to apply their own current standards arrived at after years of their own rampant industrialization will not work, especially since they still contribute disproportionately to emissions and global warming. For instance, in Delhi, where I live, there is a huge concern regarding the deeply polluted air, which worsens at a certain time around the festival of Diwali when the air is still and the rampant construction, excessive traffic, local industrial units, burning of firecrackers and stubble by farmers in the fields in surrounding states all contribute to making the air unbreathable."

"But there is an inordinate emphasis on the stubble burning, as it is easier to blame the farmers rather than hold ourselves accountable or change our own behavior. And even if we wish to try and stop the stubble-burning activity, we will need to work together through assisting the farmers with alternate methods and machines. We also saw this during COVID-19. Richer countries began to hoard all of the vaccines rather than helping whole continents like Africa first, and not realizing that this approach would not work in the long term for anyone as new and deadlier variants could emerge if parts of the planet were deliberately excluded. Covid should have shown us the fundamental interconnectedness between all seven billion humans on this planet."

"I hope my work helps expand and deconstruct closed and self-referential circles of power and visibility. I see my role as a conduit for a plurality of excluded voices to come through."

For Gill, issues of human justice and parity serve as foundational pillars of her practice. She strives to listen attentively and collectively, recognizing the power imbalances inherent in storytelling and seeking to democratize representation by amplifying diverse voices.

"Yes, long-term relationships forged with communities and individuals and interdependent relationality have been foundational to my practice, as have issues of human justice and parity."

"My ongoing endeavor involves learning to listen more deeply, to get myself out of the way in order to see more clearly, and collectively. While photography is a democratic medium in some respects, as almost everyone today has access to some form of camera, there has been disproportionate power in terms of who gets to tell the story or who is heard. My small attempt has been to try and cede control of representation, to multiply 'One Voice into Many, Many Voices.' Expanding the circle in this way reflects reality more closely. When I focus only on the explicit object – say, an artwork – I fail to pay heed to all of the processes and players embedded in it. Even in attempting to deconstruct the process I end up creating new centers of focus. In truth, there is a multitude behind any single act – or any solidified convergence of acts, that appears in the form of an object. And there is an ever-flowing continuum, which follows naturally from what came before."

In her photographic narratives, she skillfully depicts the juxtaposition of "reality" and dreamlike states, conveying both symbolic representations and the genuine experiences of community members.

"One of the great privileges of my work has been the opportunity to collaborate and learn from people outside of my own little world and knowledge system. This collaboration has been both implicit, say through putting myself in unfamiliar spaces for long lengths of time and being led by others, or more overt, as in literally working over the years very closely with rural artists to try and have a dialogue through our respective mediums themselves. The formal aspect is completely intertwined. So, for instance, the theatre has been a great inspiration to me in terms of its capacity for improvisation, and as it can break down the classic duality between subjects on stage and the audience out there by bringing the audience actively on stage to speak back."

"I am also interested in constructing new forms to deconstruct the work itself and to point to the problems implicit in attempts at representation. The actual experience is always greater than anything one can say about it, so symbolic representations are simply attempts to open doors and bridges to multidimensional understandings. Or at least, to an awareness that one constantly and unknowingly misunderstands the world," she added.

Regarding the exhibition in Istanbul, she expressed a deep sense of connection to the city, noting its political and cultural resonances with her native India.

"It is my first time in Istanbul and I am deeply moved to be here. There are so many resonances with India, both politically and culturally. I hope the very specificity of the work, the fact that the images are rooted in such particular contexts and individuals might make them resonate here too, in a way that feels beyond the stereotypes," she remarked.

Other shortlisted portfolios

At the close of the exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Colombian photographer Federico Rios Escobar was announced as the winner of the inaugural Prix Pictet People's Choice Award, receiving the prize of 10,000 Swiss Francs ($10,955). Rios Escobar's work captures the heart-wrenching realities of South American children whose parents have embarked on the perilous migrant journey through the Darien Gap, a near-impassable stretch of jungle on the Colombia-Panama border. The People's Choice Award was introduced to allow the public to vote for their favorite shortlisted series and to create further dialogue around the vital issues the Prix Pictet explores.

For more than 40 years, Ragnar Axelsson has charted the dramatic changes in the lives of the indigenous people, landscapes and environments on the fringes of the habitable world. A concern for the lives and disappearing homelands of the indigenous people of the Andes mountains informs the work of Alessandro Cinque.

Michal Luczak documents the indelible marks the once-great mining industry has left on the landscape of Upper Silesia, Poland.

Gera Artemova’s visual diary opens with the Russian bombardment of her hometown, Kyiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 24, 2022.

Vasantha Yogananthan’s work is filled with the dreams and despair of the post-Hurricane Katrina generation of children in New Orleans, U.S.

Vanessa Winship creates carefully composed portraits of schoolgirls from the Turkish borderlands.

The strange, otherworldly Iranian islands of Hormuz, Qeshm and Hengam are the touchstones of Hoda Afshar’s work.

Yael Martinez’s pierced photographs were made in the wake of the disappearance of family members, victims of the violence that is part of daily life in the Mexican state of Guerrero.

Richard Renaldi and Sian Davey both focus on the garden as a place of hope and reconnection in their work, a place that serves both as a metaphor for the human heart and a potential source of harmony.

To accompany the exhibition, Hatje Cantz has published a book featuring the shortlisted photographers together with a selection of outstanding images from a wider group of those nominated for the award. The publication features essays by the historian David Christian and writer Meehan Crist and an interview with photographer Sebastiao Salgado, the great champion of humanitarian photography, by Michael Benson, the director of the Prix Pictet. After Istanbul, Prix Pictet Human will tour other leading museums in Dublin, Bangkok, Munich, San Diego and Stockholm in 2024 and 2025.

The exhibition can be visited in Arter until July 27.