Prix Pictet 2025 – photography prize captures a world battered by storms

V&A South Kensington, London
From the terrifying scale of natural disaster to endangered plankton in the Atlantic, this year’s finalists all document the tempest engulfing the globe

Magnificent, monstrous clouds choke the sky. Even the sun is suffocated by the volatile energy of supercell thunderstorms, harbingers of chaos capable of discharging hailstones the size of grapefruits and expanding to 80km wide and 20,000 metres high. Photographer Camille Seaman became a storm chaser in 2008 and spent several years capturing these titanic tempests on camera. “Yond same black cloud, yond huge one, looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor,” Trinculo warned in The Tempest. Seaman’s spectacular images are certainly Shakespearean in their sublime magnitude, an awesome warning that kicks off the Prix Pictet’s 2025 show.

Seaman’s series, The Big Cloud, interprets the theme – storm – literally, but others among the 12 shortlisted artists take it in different directions, from nuclear bombsites to copulating plankton. Several projects focus on American stories, shifting attention to the decisive role global powers play in the current geopolitical crisis and the disastrous consequences for landscapes and people.