Photo Emile Holba
Ingrid Pollard, an acclaimed photographer associated with the British Black Arts Movement of the 1980s, has won the Hasselblad Award, the world’s biggest photography prize, with a cash purse of more than $196,000.
In addition to the money, Pollard has won a show at the Hasselblad Center in Gothenburg, Sweden, and a related publication. The exhibition will open on October 11.
Born in Guyana and based in Britain, Pollard is known for photographs that draw out connections between British landscapes and Black people posed within them. With these images, Pollard draws out forms of Black British history that are not always immediately visible—a form of inquiry that she has continued in photography and in other genres as well.
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“A lot of the work I do is meant to open up the idea of what we think England looks like,” she told Art in America in 2023, adding, “The landscapes, the African figure, the idea of Britishness, they’re all constructions when it comes down to it.”
She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2022, and is currently having a show at Belsay Hall, a castle in Northumberland where she is exhibiting sculptures that bring wood, slate, and other materials from the natural environment indoors.
In its citation for her, the Hasselblad Award jury said, “She has consistently engaged with colonial history and how it continues to impact society, both in her artistic practice and as an educator in photography. Ingrid Pollard has a profound impact on younger generations of artists and thinkers.”
“Receiving the Hasselblad Award is a great honour,” Pollard said in a statement. “It comes at a point in my life when I’m quite mature, and it gives me an opportunity to support younger photographers and researchers, which I intend to do. I wish for the award to extend beyond myself.”
