Magazine editor Darius Sanai is the co-creator of an ambitious young art prize that rewards photographers for their depiction of issues around climate change, as curated by some leading art collectors. Here he gives his thoughts after the second edition of the Louis Roederer Photography Prize for Sustainability

It’s funny what can happen when you have time to think. Early in the pandemic, during a curious period of clear, dry, cool, sunny weather in London, when citizens were allowed to take one walk in the park per day, according to government rules, the idea for the Louis Roederer Photography Prize first emerged.

During some of my walks, grounded in London and wandering around Hyde Park, waving hello at a distance to equally trapped friends—the owner of a bank by that tree, owner of a foundation feeding the ducks—I chatted with a brilliant young executive at the U.K. arm of one of our commercial partners, Champagne Louis Roederer, about a new plan.

With the thinking time afforded by the onset of the pandemic, and burnished with the input of the redoubtable Maryam Eisler, the chief contributing editor at one of the magazines I run, we began discussing the possibility of creating an art prize—but one with a difference, and that would make a difference.

The idea was to bring the themes of support for young artistic photographers, and of raising awareness of key issues in sustainability, together, while also bringing some of the world’s most prominent art collectors and thought-leaders in sustainability into action.

Left to right: Darius Sanai, Audrey Bazin; Maria Sukkar; Frédéric Rouzaud; Rita Kamale, who accepted the award on behalf of M’hammed Kilito; Nadja Swarovski; Brandei Estes, 2023.

There are many art and photographic prizes already, many of which are highly respected and significant. The difference with our rather boutique prize would be that it would be curated, amplified and celebrated by some significant voices in the mainstream art world, including those with major art collections themselves. And we would bring people making a difference in sustainability – not usually associated with the art world – to the party, quite literally, to help promote awareness of the issues.

One of my key takeaways in my day jobs (as well as owning a media company, I work at Condé Nast where I have launched more than 30 titles over the last 20 years, and have a sustainability consultancy) is that we need to get out of our silos. A major art collector is also likely to be a major investor, and all investors are aware, or should be aware, of the issues and challenges around sustainability and related areas. That was a key motivation to create the Prize.

But, while we had the full engagement of the maker of Cristal, which has long pioneered sustainable farming techniques to produce its matchless champagnes, it proved to be a while until we could really get going, due to the length of the pandemic.

But finally, we did. With Maryam Eisler’s vital help, I assembled a roster of talent—the judges, who in turn would appoint nominators, who would choose photographic artists to take part in the competition. We included thought leaders in sustainability into our ecosystem. Champagne house execs planned the launch event to perfection.

Yasuhiro Ogawa, Snaking, West Java, Indonesia (2022).

Over the 18 months it took to get the first edition of the Prize ready, the planet sent us its reminders. Heat records broken in Europe, repeatedly. The first-ever record of a tropical cyclone being generated in the Mediterranean in summer. Temperatures of over 20C in northern Switzerland in December. The first summer that the Alps had zero recorded snow lying on them (only the fast-melting glaciers).

Fast forward to now, and we have just announced the winner of the second edition of the Prize. I am awed by the enthusiasm and commitment of our judges and nominators. The judging panel includes Maryam Eisler, former chair of the TATE Middle East and North Africa Acquisitions Committee and trustee of the Whitechapel Gallery; Maria Sukkar, co-chair of the TATE Middle East North Africa Acquisitions Committee; Nadja Swarovski, collector and family luminary; Sophie Neuendorf, ArtNet VP of Digital; Azu Nwabogu, Founder and Director of African Artists’Foundation and LagosPhoto Festival; Brandei Estes, Director, Head of Photography, EMEA at Sotheby’s; and Alan Lo, one of the most influential and admirable collectors in Asia and member of the Art Basel’s Global Patron Council.

Our nominators, drawn from around the world, include or have included figures like the peerless artist Shirin Neshat; investor, philanthropist and collector Nachson Mimran; philanthropist Durjoy Rahman; and Photo London founder Fariba Farshad, among many others.

As chair of the judges, once I appoint the other judges, I don’t participate in the voting process unless there is a tie (which there hasn’t been to date) so I can take a step back and revel in the quality of artistry and passion of our entrants. The winner of the first year’s competition, which was put together over nine months when lockdown restrictions were still in place in many places, was the German-Ghanaian photographer Akosua Viktoria Adu-Sanya, with her astonishing portrayals of the effects of global warming, at glacier Santa Inés in Patagonia, taken from on board an expedition ship.

This year’s prize winner, just recently announced, was a Moroccan photographer who was born in what is now Ukraine, M’hammed Kilito. He portrays with great beauty, and subtlety, another pressing environmental issue, the depletion and death of his country’s underground springs, a sustainable source of water for millennia.

Sir Guy Weston; Akosua Viktoria Adu-Sanyah, photographer and winner of the first edition of the Louis Roederer Photography Prize; Ina Sarikhani, 2022,

The top three candidates and the winner each year have their works shown at the private White Box gallery at Nobu Hotel London Portman Square. This year we gave the six shortlisted photographers a big spread in the current issue of LUX magazine, in which William Kentridge has taken over the logo, with the additional kudos of a launch, with our partner Deutsche Bank, at Frieze New York. The winner also receives a cash prize from Louis Roederer.

Physically the climax came during a fascinating evening at the Nobu Hotel, where the awards for the second edition of the Prize were made. We made a magic blend of guests. Investors mingled with collectors. Heads of sustainability for major corporates, not usually associated with art shows, and ecology academics chatted with owners of art foundations and artists.

The delicious champagne and canapés flowed, but this was a party with a purpose. The issues facing our planet are too urgent to ignore. Awareness is the first step to education, which leads to action. We in the content industry have a duty to create the first two and help others execute the latter.

Our judges, who did so much to spread the word among the art collector community around the world, are already making plans for next year’s edition of this prize that punches above its weight.

Darius Sanai is the proprietor of LUX Global Media and also works at Condé Nast International.

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We all practice photography as much as we can, but how often do you consider how you approach your practice? More focused and purposeful practice can yield better results in less time, and one of the best ways to go about that is with a project. This fantastic video essay features an experienced photographer discussing the power of projects and offering some great ideas you can try out yourself. 

Coming to you from Craig Roberts of e6 Vlogs, this awesome video tutorial discusses the power of pointed projects for improving as a photographer. Part of the power of projects is that they challenge you to not just shoot good single photographs, but to establish consistency in the quality of your work. Almost anyone can create a good single image, but it takes true skill to be able to create compelling photos consistently, and a project is one of the best ways to practice this, as it gives you a wealth of data for direct comparison, allowing you to see where things are going well and where you could improve. On top of that, they are simply a lot of fun! Check out the video above for the full rundown from Roberts. 

In the 1950s and 1960s, Fred Herzog used it to photograph the streets of Vancouver. Raghubir Singh used it to capture life in India in vibrant color. In the 1980s and ’90s, Steve McCurry brought it with him on his travels. At around the same time, Luigi Ghirri was using it to document everyday life in suburban Italy. In this collection of artists, we revisit the emergence of Kodachrome—”King Kodachrome,” as Singh called it—a color reversal film that made history.

The Vancouver of the 1950s and 1960s has vanished. The wooden houses have been replaced by concrete, and the wide streets have narrowed and filled. But before Vancouver changed, it was photographed in color by Fred Herzog.

A solid decade before Sternfeld, Eggleston, Misrach, and Shore, Herzog’s choice of positive color film was an odd and prophetic one. Until the mid-1970s, black and white was obvious and common choice, but Herzog didn’t fall prey to that pretension. Explore more in the book Fred Herzog / Modern Color by Hatje Cantz.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Raghubir Singh (1942-1999) secured his position as one of the early serious photographers to work in color. At the time, Kodachrome slide film was not generally accepted by his contemporaries in Europe and the United States, but Singh felt it was necessary to his life and purpose as a photographer of India.

Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be available in his home country until trade restrictions were lifted in the early 1990s. In the meantime, Singh relied on magazines overseas, including National Geographic, to provide him with the precious film he had nicknamed “King Kodachrome.”

In 1978, a 28-year-old Steve McCurry embarked on his first journey to India. At the time, he wasn’t photographing in the vivid color that defined the majority of his career but in black and white. It was the country itself, he suggests, that propelled his transition into Kodachrome. He went through hundreds of rolls in that first visit.

McCurry came to know the cities, the villages, the temples, and the holes in the wall by traveling throughout India by rail, stopping to preserve people and places to which he felt instinctively drawn. He woke before dawn and continued shooting long after the sun went down and his legs grew wary.

In 1978, Luigi Ghirri self-published Kodachrome, a landmark book republished by MACK on the 20th anniversary of his passing. Known for his wit and avant-garde sensibility, the Italian artist transformed the mundane into the surreal through his creative use of color and cropping. Colazione sull’erba, also published by MACK, focuses on the photographs he made in the suburbs of Modena.

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They’re the only brand to really embrace it, but OM System really shines when users show what’s possible with the computational photography settings. Sure, there’s something to be said about more pure photography features, but I could shoot film if I really wanted to go that route. In fact, there’s a Hasselblad loaded up with CineStill right next to me. But sometimes, I want an imaging product like what OM System offers. And I honestly think they could take their computational photography even further.

OM System’s Dive Into Computational Photography

First off, I’m sure some folks aren’t completely aware of OM System’s computational photography. There’s a lot involved here. Beyond standard HDR abilities, there are some cool tricks like focus stacking, live composite, and live ND. All these save you a ton of time in Photoshop or post-production. That’s pretty awesome. The system does things no other camera system is capable of. I know that, after a long day shooting photos, I don’t want to sit down and edit a ton of them. So, knowing that I got the shot done in-camera is wonderful. Combine this with star-rating images to immediately access my favorites and I’m very happy.

But OM System could do something even bigger with computational photography. Specifically, I think they could address a problem that Micro Four Thirds has had for a long time.

Getting Full-Frame Depth of Field With Computational Photography

Let’s put it this way: if your phone’s camera can create artificial bokeh, why can’t Micro Four Thirds cameras do the same via computational photography? Just imagine: their 25mm f1.2 PRO would actually look like a 50mm f1.2 on full-frame. The same goes for their 17mm f1.2 PRO. It could also make a telephoto like their 300mm f4 render like an actual 600mm f4 instead of a 600mm f8. And with a very powerful processor, it could probably be combined with something like Pro Capture Mode and render RAW files as the final images. 

Of course, they’d have to get it just right. Google and Apple have a ton of problems to address with Portrait mode and stuff, but OM System could likely do a significantly better job. And now that they’re no longer tied to their mother company, I think more innovation is possible. OM System could also inject the AI noise algorithms in their software into the camera. Honestly, there’s so much that could be possible with all this. 

I’m also sure OM System would make this only possible with their own lenses. And that’s perfectly fine. Sure, Panasonic has wonderful glass, but it would also probably mean that maybe OM System starts to make fast zoom lenses again. Back in the DSLR days of Four Thirds, they made f2 zoom lenses. 

Now, there’s a reason why I think this should be a computational photography add-on. Micro Four Thirds offers a real advantage when shooting with their lenses. The extra depth of field can make a ton of things easier. Besides this, we’re happy with how small and lightweight the cameras and lenses can be.