TAKASHI ARAI SHORTLISTED FOR PRIX PICTET PHOTOGRAHY AWARD

Purdy Hicks is delighted to announce Takashi Arai has been shortlisted for Storm: The Eleventh Cycle of the Prix Pictet, for his series Exposed in a Hundred Suns, 2011- ongoing. 

 

The hypocentre, the point directly beneath or above a nuclear explosion, is a metaphor for invisibility and unreachability. This exploration of nuclear histories involves circling around atomic monuments as though navigating the hypocentre’s gravitational pull, taking hundreds of 6 cm by 6 cm daguerreotypes, an early form of photography.

 

At school in Cold-War Japan, Arai heard firsthand accounts from visiting hibakushas, survivors of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. His imagination of the nuclear apocalypse was also shaped by films and cartoons, often from Hollywood. The iconic mushroom cloud was rarely witnessed on the ground but was photographed from above by the very bombers that carried out the attack. In these ways, Japan’s visual memory of the bombings was shaped retrospectively, often through external perspectives..
 
Through its approach, the project challenges dominant historical representations and invites new ways of seeing.
 

At school in Cold-War Japan, Arai heard firsthand accounts from visiting hibakushas, survivors of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. His imagination of the nuclear apocalypse was also shaped by films and cartoons, often from Hollywood. The iconic mushroom cloud was rarely witnessed on the ground but was photographed from above by the very bombers that carried out the attack. In these ways, Japan’s visual memory of the bombings was shaped retrospectively, often through external perspectives.

 

Through its approach, the project challenges dominant historical representations and invites new ways of seeing. 

 

The shortlist exhibition will be on view at the Victoria & Albert Museum, 26 September - 19 October. 

 

For further details of Prix Pictect please visit here.

11 July 2025