US photographer Sally Mann wins this year's Prix Pictet award

American photographer Sally Mann is the winner of the this year's Prix Pictet award for her project exploring the devastating wildfires at the Great Dismal Swamp in south-eastern Virginia.

The winning series, titled Blackwater, was conducted between 2008 and 2012 where the first slave ships docked in America.

Ms Mann draws a parallel between the destruction and racial conflict in America.

"The fires in the Great Dismal Swamp seemed to epitomise the great fire of racial strife in America - the civil war, emancipation, the civil rights movement, in which my family was involved, the racial unrest of the late 1960s and most recently the summer of 2020," she said.

The prize, founded in 2008 by the Pictet Group in Switzerland, rewards photographers' contributions to the ongoing debate on social and environmental challenges.

Ms Mann's winning series of tintypes - an early form of photography in which an image is produced on a thin sheet of metal - and the work of the other shortlisted finalists, will be on display at the V&A museum in London until 9 January 2022.

All photographs copyright Sally Mann/Gagosian/Prix Pictet.