The Guardian – Review by Charlotte Jansen > Read the article
Tom Fecht — PRIX PICTET 2025 – STORMVictoria & Albert Museum, London  |
Tom Fecht has been nominated and shortlisted as a finalist of the prestigious Prix Pictet 2025, the world’s leading award for photography and sustainability. This year’s theme, STORM, explores both the power and fragility of our times—capturing forces of nature, societal upheavals, and moments of transformation. The Prix Pictet 2025 exhibition is now open at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, presenting the work of twelve shortlisted artists. This showcase brings together photo artists from across the globe whose work illuminates the urgency and poetry of the theme. The exhibition presents four works by Tom Fecht from his ongoing series Luciferines – Entre chien et loup (2015–2025). 
This series captures the rare phenomenon of natural bioluminescence, photographed on the wild Atlantic coast in Brittany. Luciferines are an endangered species of cold-water plankton threatened by rising ocean temperatures. The electric effects of these microscopic creatures occur when millions are exposed to molecular oxygen while reproducing at full moon on the turbulent surface of the stormy sea. The sublime traces of their electric discharge remain almost invisible to the naked eye and can only be captured entre chien et loup, a twilight moment when the first blue rays of daylight intersect with the remaining reflections of the moon. In times of global warming, uncertainty, hesitation, and subconscious fear are mirrored in the blurred boundaries and shifting limits of liquid spaces. The coastline, however, remains a place of transformation and inconsistency. Like dying coral reefs, Luciferines point us towards an event horizon where an exhausted nature hits a dangerous point of no return. Yet in a world on fire, these marine creatures also lead us to the magic of their beauty. 
Fecht’s work is held and has been exhibited at corporate and private museums and collections internationally, including Documenta IX, Kassel (1992); Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn (1993); Hamburger Kunsthalle (1994); Nationalgalerie Berlin (1996); Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (2001); MUCEM, Marseille (2003); Royal College of Art, London (2007); Museum Folkwang, Essen (2010); LAAC Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dunkerque (2014); Museum DKM, Duisburg (2017); New York Public Library (2019); and CERN, Geneva (2023). Fecht has taught at Cornell University, New York, at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College in London, and at ETH Zurich. |
The exhibition Tour 2025–2027 includes:
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