Presented every year since 1955 to reward a book dedicated to the photography published over the past year by a French publisher, the Nadar prize awarded by Les Gens d’Images distinguished Room 207 of Jean-Michel André (Actes Sud editions).
Photograph to repair
Between a photographic diary and autofiction, the monograph has risen to first place in front of 116 other works transmitted by 46 publishers. For this 70th editionthe Nadar Prize jury made up of personalities from the world of publishing and photography highlighted the photographer’s strength of resilience. The starting point of his book is a childhood trauma of those who make the darkest news stories.
Seven years old, on vacation with his father, the author was occupying the room next to his father when he was brutally murdered by a gang of criminals in a hotel in Avignon. The shock will cause him to lose his memory.
Since then, the themes of absence and repair have formed the thread of a recognized photographic work, whether it explores the themes of circulation, migratory flows or more intimate stories as is the case for Chambre 207.
(in)intimate quest
Forty years have passed. Jean-Michel André undertakes a return to these places, stripped of his memories, but armed with his device. He immortalizes these places he crossed, or which he supposes he crossed, with his father.
Photography then makes the bridge to autofiction to question, propose and offer reading paths to remember and understand.
Archives, press clippings, photographs of family objects combine to form this pictorial collection in the face of mourning.
Printed in Italy in Verona, the work offers its reader 80 color and black and white photographs covered in a paperback cover with flaps. A afterword by Clément Chéroux accompanies the photographs.
The format A4 of the monograph was not chosen at random by its author: recalling the police investigation files, the book weaves the link even more strongly between creation and documentation.
The author is the recipient of an endowment of 10 000 € thanks to the support of the Ministry of Culture and an endowment of 5 000 € of the Fnac.
Jean-Michel André succeeds Jean-François Spricigo, 2023 laureate for We the horizon will remain alone (Le Bec en l’Air edition).
L’exposition eponymous by Jean-Michel André, produced by the Institute for Photography and the Mediterranean Center of Photography, is to be discovered at the Hospice Comtesse de Lille museum until February 2, 2025.
The moving Room 207 (21 x 29.7 cm, 152 pages, €39) is available from Actes Sud and Fnac.
