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The young Canon photographer Munem Wasif (Agence VU) has been awarded a €20,000 commission by Prix Pictet – a new photographic award that focuses on sustainability - to photograph the charity WaterAid’s Chittagong Hill Tracts project in his homeland of Bangladesh.

Wasif had been one of 18 photographers shortlisted for the inaugural Prix Pictet Award, sponsored by Swiss bank Pictet & Cie, which was won by the Canadian photographer Benoit Aquin for his images of desertification in China. At the Prix Pictet awards ceremony, held recently in Paris, Ivan Pictet announced that Wasif had won the commission to photograph the Chittagong Hill Tracts project, which is supported by the Pictet & Cie bank.

Leo Johnson, of the Prix Pictet Executive, explained: “We know the facts. We know the figures - the temperature increases, the inequity of water distribution. We know it and we are numb to it. This is a prize whose function is to counter that numbness and Wasif’s work was deemed to be most capable of countering that numbness and communicating the crucial importance of sustainability projects, such as this one in Bangladesh, to the lives of people around the world.”

© courtesy Prix Pictet 2008

Pictured (left to right) at the Prix Pictet award ceremony are Francis Hodgson, Head of Photographs, Sotheby’s and head judge of the inaugural Prix Pictet award; Munem Wasif; and Ivan Pictet, Managing Partner of Pictet & Cie.

Wasif told CPN: “It’s a great year for me and a great support to produce my own work. For me the important thing is I want to photograph people intimately; I want to photograph people emotionally; and I want to photograph closely – from my heart. My country (Bangladesh) is a beautiful country and it has a lot of stories, but if I don’t photograph them then very few people will know about them.”

Wasif will shoot the €20,000 Prix Pictet commission over 20 days during the next few months. It is the latest accolade in a successful year for 25-year-old Wasif during which he won the City of Perpignan Young Reporter’s Award for his work ‘Bangladesh, standing on the edge’ at Visa pour l’Image 2008; received the Fabrica F25 International Award for concerned photography; and took silver prize in the Daily Life and excellence award in the ‘War and Disaster’ news category of China International Press.

The Chittagong Hills Tract project will also be funded by royalties from the sale of the Prix Pictet book, Water - due to be published in January 2009 - which features the best photographs from the 18 photographers shortlisted for the Prix Pictet 2008 prize. It will be published by TeNeues and retail at around €50.

The Prix Pictet competition exhibition is now on show at the Dubai international Finance Centre, Dubai until the end of November and it will then go to the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography in Greece until the end of March 2009.