An image of self-reflection among the Covid-19 chaos helped London artist Jameisha Prescod scoop a Wellcome Photography Prize.
Ms Prescod won the single image prize with her photograph Untangling in the Managing Mental Health category.
The prize, now in its third year, focused on images that covered mental health, infectious disease and climate change.
“It’s really hard to talk about mental health and I guess it’s especially hard to turn a camera on yourself to expose some of the deepest and darkest [fears], but I’m glad that even taking it, I guess, could touch on something that a lot of us have been going through in this pandemic,” Ms Prescod said.
“I would also like to thank my family and especially my grandfather who bought me my first camera,” she said.
The shortlisted works included images from the California wildfires to the impact of tourism in the Maldives.
Yoppy Pieter won the series image prize in the Fighting Infections category for her Trans Woman: Between Colour and Voice.
“Both the winning entries moved the judges and initiated debate, we couldn’t help but discuss them at length,” said Jeremy Farrar, chairman of the Wellcome Photography Prize. “Covid-19 and mental health are components in both, but what captivated us all was the powerful human stories at the very centre – viewed through a lens of compassion.”
The other four category finalists were:
- The Big Fish is an image inspired by Iranian myth.
- The Time of Coronavirus was taken in Wuhan close to where the pandemic began.
- Climate Cost shows a man rescuing belongings from the wreckage of his house in Bangladesh.
- An Elegy for the Death of Hamun shows how Iran’s once-fertile Sistan and Baluchestan region is turning into a desert.
Will the pound fall to parity with the dollar?
The idea of pound parity now seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may split away from the European Union without a deal.
Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock, sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 (Dh3.67) on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet – a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the UK exit the bloc without an agreement.
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the October 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fuelling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling has fallen more than 7 per cent in the past three months, the worst performance among major developed-market currencies.
“The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Mr Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks.
The pound fell 0.8 per cent to $1.2033 on Friday, its weakest closing level since the 1980s, after a report on the second quarter showed the UK economy shrank for the first time in six years. The data means it is likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates, according to Mizuho Bank.
The BOE said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations showed around a 6.4 per cent chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2 per cent in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table.
Bloomberg
