The Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac Photography Prize awarded

For this 2024 edition, the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac presented its Photography Prize to three winners and awarded a special mention. Created in 2022, this distinction is in the wake of its biennial program and photographic residencies intended to support international contemporary creation in this medium.

Already the recipient of the V&A prize in London, Indian photographer Priyadarshini Ravichandran, born in 1988 in Tamil Nadu, caught the attention of the jury for her project entitled CUSPdescribed as “an investigation into the inner workings of the cosmic cyclical rhythm in women’s bodies and the changes induced during periods of menstruation”.

Also awarded was Felipe Romero Beltrán, a Colombian photographer born in 1992 in Bogotá and based in Paris. His work, which explores social issues based on careful research, was notably shown in the Curiosa section of Paris Photo in 2023. He previously received the Kbr PhotoAward in Madrid, the GetxoPhoto Award in 2020 and the Madrid Photobook Prize the same year. He was rewarded for his project Paramo: Familywhich documents family memories in Colombia in the 1970s, marked by the displacement of more than 70% of the rural population towards the cities in a context of conflict between the army and the guerrillas.

Julie Gough, Australian artist and researcher, has worked since 2018 at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, in Nipaluna/Hobart, as curator of First Peoples art and culture. She was previously Curator of Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Victoria (2002-2004) and Lecturer in Aboriginal Studies at Riawunna, Center for Aboriginal Studies, University of Tasmania (2002-2003). Since 1993, she has participated in more than 200 group and individual exhibitions.

His project The search presents a series of photographs and videos exploring his process of research and discovery of Tasmanian cultural objects held in various collections – notably in France, Europe and the United Kingdom. In the collections of the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, she was particularly interested in photographs of busts of Tasmanian Aboriginal people, taken in the 19th century by Jacques-Philippe Potteau.

“I consider myself a detective and believe that much of the world is closed or mysterious, hiding or withholding information or objects, she explains. This is probably the mindset of all members of the first nations that were colonized. My perspective and my method therefore consist of looking all around me, behind, and below, to see if something is hidden, to try to define, name and locate what is invisible and absent. The search is ongoing and the work is to make sense of the confusion we have inherited. »

Finally, the jurors awarded a special mention to Senami Donoumassou (Benin).

Since its launch in 2008, the residency program at the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac has made it possible to integrate 44 photographic works, or more than 690 prints, into national public collections. In 2022, the program was renamed the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac Photography Prize. Its endowment, which includes the copyright for the entry of the work into the collections, amounts to 30,000 euros for each of the three winners. After a call for applications, the annual selection is made by an international jury.

The 2024 jury was composed of: Diane Dufour, director of the Bal, in Paris; Julien Frydman, publisher, co-founder and artistic director of the Offscreen fair – installations, still and moving images; Katia Kameli, artist and director; Thyago Nogueira, curator at the Instituto Moreira Salles (São Paulo); Holly Roussell, exhibition curator, museologist and art historian. And for the Quai Branly Museum – Jacques Chirac: Emmanuel Kasarhérou, president; Christine Drouin, director of cultural development; Anne-Solène Rolland, director of the Heritage and Collections Department; Christine Barthe, head of the Photographic Collections Heritage Unit; Annabelle Lacour, head of the Photography collections.