LBS Photo Awards winner: Pascal Maitre captures life by firelight

Pascal Maitre has won first prize in the second London Business School (LBS) Photography Awards for his illuminating series, captured with his Canon EOS 5D Mark IV and Canon EOS-1D X Mark II, of a community surviving with no electricity in West Africa.

Shrouded in darkness, but for the faint orange glow of a gas lamp, a midwife helps deliver a baby in a small village in Benin, West Africa. Without electricity, Raïssa Godjo relies on a single lamp and a hand torch to carry out life-saving work in her rural clinic.

This is a snapshot of life without electricity, the reality for more than 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, where six out of 10 live without access to an electrical grid. Where connectivity exists, demand outstrips supply, making rationing, rolling blackouts and power cuts commonplace. It’s an issue that captured French photographer Pascal Maitre’s attention during his many years working across the continent – and it's covering it that has now won him the LBS Photography Awards first prize.

The awards show, run in partnership with Canon, called for photo stories highlighting the positive social impact businesses – from local start-ups and social enterprises through to multinational corporations – can have by tackling today’s global issues. These, the inaugural awards, saw more than 200 entries across three categories: Environment, Energy and Resources; Community Engagement; and Human Development.

"This is about big global challenges – economic development and poverty, gender issues, the environment, conservation and wildlife, the experience of workers and employees, issues around world health – and how businesses, corporates and multinationals interact in that space," says judge Raji Jagadeesan, Executive Director of the Business for Development Institute at LBS. "I think there is a broader societal trend right now of asking about the role of big institutions in society. We wanted to elevate that conversation, and the fact that businesses can have a footprint and an impact."

This project on energy poverty has been 20 years in the making for Canon Ambassador, Pascal. "I’ve travelled in Africa for many years, and almost every day there are problems related to the lack of electricity," he says. "It concerns education; with no lights, children cannot study at home at night. It concerns health; hospitals must sometimes operate with no illumination, and power cuts mean they cannot safely store medicines and vaccines in fridges. It is also affects the economy because you cannot develop small industry without power."

With the speed of electrification failing to keep pace with a rapidly rising population, and many countries lacking the infrastructure needed to power up, innovation is required to effect change. Power generation remains woefully inadequate – the 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa generate the equivalent of Spain, meaning 800 million people have access to the same amount of power as 45 million. "I feel this is a very important topic, I want the world to know about this problem. Some businesses are helping, and there are many projects, but they work too slowly," says Pascal.

It was the human angle of Pascal’s imagery that resonated with the judges. "This series of photographs put a human face on what can feel like very technical conversations about capital or different energy sources. The power of the series is the simplicity of it – these very moving photos show what it is like to not have light," says Raji.

The work of the finalists, which will be exhibited at LBS in February, reflects the diversity of global issues with which business intersects – from portraits in an American community feeling the effects of climate change, through to the modern economy told through the lens of night shift workers in Tokyo. Energy issues were also reflected in a shortlisted series by South African photojournalist and Canon Ambassador, Brent Stirton, in a complex exploration of hydroelectricity in Virunga National Park in The Democratic Republic of the Congo.

"With Brent’s series, what was interesting was the complexity of the environment that the community lives in – there are also conservation and poaching issues," says Raji. "I really think we are living in the age of people caring about something that’s broader than themselves. We’re interested in promoting the idea that business should be part of that conversation."

The LBS Photography Awards exhibition runs at LBS, Marylebone, London, from 8 to 14 February. Visit www.lbsphotoawards.com for more information.

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