Interview “The Most Powerful Work Often Already Exists”: Sabine Senn on Prix Pictet and the Power of Photography
For Sabine Senn, Group Head of Photography at the Pictet Group, what an image can communicate has been the focus of her career spent bringing photography into the public eye. Before joining the Geneva-based financial group in 2016, she worked as a picture editor in Swiss journalism, developing an editorial sensibility she has since brought to Pictet’s visual identity. Having established the group’s photography department from scratch, Senn commissions photographers as authors, giving their individual perspectives a place in its publications. Among them is Magnum photographer Olivia Arthur, whose work interpreting global megatrends for Pictet’s Annual Report offers an example of how photography can make complex subjects much more tangible.
Founded in 2008, the Prix Pictet has become a major international award dedicated to photography and sustainability, with past laureates including Richard Mosse, Sally Mann and Alfredo Jaar. Its twelfth cycle, announced this summer, is themed Jungle, and invites photographers to consider a word rich in ecological and social possibilities. As Paris Photo 2026 prepares to open from 12 to 15 November, The Wick caught up with Senn to discuss the art of commissioning, the beauty of difficult subjects, why documentary photography matters more than ever in the age of AI and the images that have never left her.
THE WICK: What does a typical Monday look like for you?
Sabine Senn: I usually work from home on Mondays, because my mediamatician apprentice is at school. After breakfast with my partner, I settle into my home office beside an abstract work by the American photographer Liz Nelson. I use the first quiet hour to plan the week, before the daily routine begins: catching up with the team, writing creative briefs, commissioning photographers and advising colleagues on how to use photography. At lunch, if there’s time, I take a brisk walk through the centre of Lausanne.
TW: What is your role at Prix Pictet and why do you think it is vital for a financial institution to engage with culture?
SS: As Group Head of Photography, I see the Prix Pictet as part of a wider commitment to photography and the arts. For a financial institution, engaging with culture is vital because our business deals in abstractions: risk, time, long-term trends. Photography can turn them into tangible stories. Luca Locatelli, nominated for the Prix Pictet, has photographed the circular economy and turned a concept most of us only read about into images we can instantly connect with. Photography is also the most accessible art form, as we all take photographs every day. My work is to use that accessibility to build connection with our clients and staff, and to bring artists’ work to new eyes. At its best, an image clicks and opens up a whole new perspective, or adds a new layer to a story you already know.
“At its best, an image clicks and opens up a whole new perspective, or adds a new layer to a story you already know.”
Sabine Senn
TW: This year marks Prix Pictet’s first presentation at Paris Photo. What excites you most about bringing the prize into the Grand Palais?
SS: It is a great honour to partner with a fair that believes as strongly in the power of photography as we do at Pictet, and a real pleasure to see up close the precision and expertise with which the Paris Photo team works. This partnership is also a wonderful opportunity to build a broader community and reach new audiences for the artists who have been nominated for, shortlisted for or won the Prix Pictet. The artists and their work are the foundation of an award like ours. As photography celebrates its bicentenary, it feels as if the stars are aligned for a successful partnership!
TW: Valérie Belin’s Still Life and Alfredo Jaar’s The End turn ecological crisis into images of extraordinary beauty. Why can beauty be such a powerful way to discuss difficult subjects?
SS: Indeed, beauty, and I think humour and the sublime strike a similar note. They trigger strong emotions that make us stop and look twice. What they have in common is that they take viewers by surprise and lead them on an unexpected journey. In both series, it is the slight friction between what we see and what the image is telling us that creates this surprise. Belin’s densely composed still lifes are so seductive that it takes a moment to notice the objects are worthless plastic, and then the unease sets in. Jaar’s images look, at first sight, like peaceful landscapes, until we realise that we are looking at an ecological disaster. Our expectations are quietly subverted.
TW: The new Prix Pictet cycle takes Jungle as its theme. What do you hope photographers might find in that word that is not immediately obvious?
SS: I trust the artists and our nominators to answer this question. To me, many of the most convincing, haunting and engaging series exist because of the artists’ curious minds and their perseverance. They are the ones who manage to translate their interests and preoccupations into images that can connect with a viewer by opening a door, inviting them into their realities. Once that conversation begins, the artist’s inner monologue becomes a two-way exchange that finds a response in the viewer.
TW: As Group Head of Photography at Pictet, you spend your working life making decisions about images. What is an image which has never left you?
SS:
They come in pairs! On a personal level, there are two. The first is Rinko Kawauchi’s photograph of a soap bubble floating quietly in the air, for the ethereal, timeless beauty she finds in such an ordinary and fleeting moment. The second is an image by Andi Gáldi Vinkó from her series If You Knew It, Why Didn’t You Do Something About It?, because however many times I look at it, it makes me smile and think.
As for my work with Pictet, every commission brings a new favourite. One example is my commission with Magnum photographer Olivia Arthur to illustrate megatrends for Pictet’s Annual Report, and the first collage she shared with me. It stands for that magical moment when an idea, the creative brief and endless conversations come together in a single image. I remember the mix of joy and relief at seeing a first concrete result and knowing we were aligned.
Another moment was working with Hélène Binet in her studio and finding the final diptych to close her sequence documenting the construction of Pictet’s new headquarters in Geneva. Pure and shared contentment.
TW: If you could commission any photographer to document one issue facing the world today, who would you choose and what would you ask them to photograph?
SS:
A very difficult question: there are so many issues and so many talents. I would want to shed light on regions and communities whose stories need to be told more often, and more accurately, from within. I am thinking of photographers like Juan Brenner, Luisa Dörr or Yael Martínez. There are also many more stories to be told about womanhood, even though we have seen more of them in recent years, thanks to photographers like Andi Gáldi Vinkó or Lydia Goldblatt. And then there is our relationship with technology, which brings me straight to Lauren Greenfield and Social Studies, her work on social media and its impact on children and teenagers.
In the end, though, the most powerful work often already exists. Through the Prix Pictet, I see my role as identifying and creating opportunities to bring such work to a wider audience and amplify its reach. That, by the way, is how the Prix Pictet itself began: a former managing partner of the Group saw Edward Burtynsky’s photographs in a magazine. He was moved by the impact the images had on him and wondered how to make sure stories like these are seen.
TW: What’s the last exhibition you saw that you’re still thinking about?
SS:
Two come to mind. They are not the most recent exhibitions I have seen, but both have stayed with me, perhaps for similar reasons. Both question the role of photography in our society and its relationship to reality. They also make a strong case for reportage and documentary photography, which, in my view, have only gained in significance since AI went mainstream. And yes, both artists are Prix Pictet laureates, but that is pure coincidence. They are Luc Delahaye’s exhibition Le bruit du monde at Jeu de Paume in Paris and Alfredo Jaar’s immersive installation Inferno & Paradiso at Photo Elysée in Lausanne.
To prove that I do look beyond the Prix Pictet, I would add a third: Gerhard Richter’s Overpainted Photographs, shown at Luma in Arles. He is a painter, yes, but few artists have thought harder about what a photograph is.
TW: What’s your favourite Culturally Curious spot in Paris when you’re off duty?
SS: What many photography and art professionals have most likely in common is that “off duty” never really exists, does it? My first tip would be to come for the next Photoclimat Biennale in autumn 2027! It is an open-air environmental and social photography biennial co-founded by photographers Floriane de Lassée and Nicolas Henry. For a quieter moment, I find peace in the sculpture garden of the Musée Rodin, or at the café of the Petit Palais, where I sit outside whatever the weather.
TW: Who is your ultimate Monday Muse and why?
SS: Kathy Ryan, the former director of photography of The New York Times Magazine, for her exceptional eye and her unparalleled talent for finding the sweet spot between content and the artist’s vision.
