in the morning IG feed, from someone I follow but don’t know; didn’t know very much about, even. They posted (ukegirl99 ingy pingy) about being awarded the Hasselblad award for 2024. I looked, but didn’t follow up… I don’t put note to the Hasselblad awards, thinking them commercial achievement.

It is easy to overlook things in a world of many things to look at. We look quickly. I do — even though I restrict how much hits my screen — enters my world of books. I know that if I’ve seen her work, the early work, I wouldn’t have noted it, even though the hand-coloring would have appealed. Work has to sustain the artist longer than is usually possible.

Awards make the work something to re-visit. That is more valuable than the dollar amount. In preparing this note to myself, I dug into the Hasselblad award enough to give it value; value because of the artists they have recognized. In one sense, that is what the company+foundation probably hopes happens.

That was that. In reading my email, intending to delete the Hasselblad cast, I saw more about Ingrid Pollard, and the award. Seeing more, I looked for more. Her site: http://www.ingridpollard.com/ No mention, the news is more recent than the website “news” section.

That will change.

[In the video, she recounts her “notification” story. At first, on the phone, she doubted the veracity. It took the email to convince her. In an eWorld, even the one connected because of the phones, we doubt the voice on the other end of the line. Sound isn’t the eye. We prefer text. That thing we can read, show, share. The sound of the distant other is gone in a click.]

From the email: the Hasselblad Award honours individuals whose work significantly impacts the field and pushes artistic boundaries. Ingrid Pollard, the 44th recipient of the Hasselblad Award, joins an exclusive group of previous Hasselblad Award laureates, including Ansel Adams (1981), Cindy Sherman (1994), Hiroshi Sugimoto (2001), Dayanita Singh (2022), and 2023 laureate, Carrie Mae Weems.

Quite a list. Diverse, brought about by the years of an expanding photography world.

• 1981, Adams. USD 20,000. “With clarity and precision, he visualized the spectacular vistas and rich native details of the Western United States. In 1942 Ansel Adams developed the “zone system” which employs careful sensitometric control and adjustments of exposure and development. As an artist, a teacher, and a master of photographic technique, Ansel Adams’ influence has been felt by successive generations of photographers from all over the world.”

• 1999, Sherman. SEK 500,000. “Much of her work has been concerned with the position of women in a consumerist and media-driven society, and with the ironies and contradictions of contemporary women’s lives. She can also be seen as a significant “re-inventor” of two important traditions in photographic art – the photo surrealism of the 1930s and the photo-based conceptual art of the 1960s. Cindy Sherman’s influence on successive generations of artists and photographers has been, and continues to be, immense.“

• 2001, Sugimoto.  SEK 500,000. “Inspired by Renaissance paintings and early 19th century photography, and using a large format camera, Sugimoto achieves a wide range of tones in a body of work that reflects his great love of detail, his outstanding technical mastery and – above all – his fascination with the paradoxes of time.”

• 2022, Singh. SEK 2,000,000. ““Through photography she records and shapes the stories told within the structure of the archive before turning it into a new form. Her works are moving in several senses of the word: the audience is both touched by and is encouraged to touch the images. “ https://youtu.be/3tgMr5lnA3c?si=PEWKChMlfqlH_Wkk

• 2023. Weems. SEK 2,000,000. ” “When Carrie Mae Weems first appeared on the scene four decades ago, her work was instantly iconic, even if it took time for the world to recognize it as such. As her vision has evolved in intuitive, unpredictable ways, it has only become more essential.” –-Jury chair, Joshua Chuang