Prix Pictet, V&A

Nominated works for the Prix Pictet award for photography and sustainability go on show at the V&A

An unexpected aura of pathos surrounds this year's Prix Pictet, hosted at the Victoria and Albert Museum, owing to the death at 68 of the prizewinner, Michael Schmidt. Schmidt passed away in Berlin only days after illness had prevented him from attending the ceremony at which the former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan pronounced him the winner of the prize, worth 100,000 Swiss Francs.

The Prix Pictet celebrates photography and sustainability. In this, the tenth year of Prix Pictet, eleven photographers responded to the theme of consumption. Schmidt's winning entry, Lebensmittel (which translates as Food Stuff) is a collection of 60 photographs taken between 2006-2010 and displayed as a huge collage. By all accounts, the judges struggled to choose between the various entries. However, considering the huge scope of his project, Schmidt is a worthy winner. Lebensmittel documents the supply chain of food from the fast food restaurant all the way back to the factory farm via the processing plant and the slaughterhouse. The winning photographs are unfussy and unsentimental, they have a persuasive power in their clarity and simplicity.

Refreshingly, Schmidt used only an ordinary 35mm camera to produce his body of work, entirely avoiding the seductive power of high-definition, highly polished and digitally manipulated images. Don't miss out on the opportunity to see the unfortunately final success of this talented artist.