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Fondation HSBC pour la Photographie and Éditions Textuel are publishing Photographies Contemporaines Points de vue (Contemporary Photographs - Points of view ). This book, prefaced by Christian Caujolle, introduces the new generation of photographers, by presenting the work of 22 of them nowadays. These 60s and 70s born artists from France, Japan, Denmark, Great Britain and the United States, have all been laureates of Fondation HSBC pour la Photographie since its creation in 1995. The photographers presented in the book have been looking at our current world, questioning its issues, drifts, contradictions and changes. They reveal the terrific evolution of the documentary genre and criticise the usual opposition between journalists and artists’ visions.
The diversity of approaches, looks and sensibilities proper to everyone is illustrated through intimist or dreamlike photographs, portraits, documentaries or landscape views. What first shock the reader is the vigour of the photos of the young generation.
Photographies contemporaines - Points de vue help us to apprehend the evolution of these photographers’ works since they won awards by putting side by side recent pictures and others selected earlier by Fondation HSBC pour la Photographie. A short portrait summarise the key moments of their work and life. Then each of them comment their own work, research and inspiration sources.
As Christian Caujolle stresses in his foreword, "it must be underlined that while, in the beginning, photographers generally offered "collections" of pictures, they acquired today a bigger maturity, defending clearly structured projects, and, in most cases, have very precise ideas on the way they wish to exhibit their works and to publish them. What became remarkable, beyond the attention given to presentation, is their commitment to take a stand and make sense."
Pages 102-103
Born in 1972, British photographer Rip Hopkins got into photo-journalism very early in his career. Alongside his studies at the École nationale supérieure de création industrielle in Paris, he produced documentaries and photographic features for Médecins Sans Frontières. He travelled through Southern Sudan, Bosnia, Liberia, Uganda, East Timor…, capturing the fate of populations at risk.
He joined the VU agency in 1996 and the following year received the Bourse Mosaïque, the Kokak Prize for young photo-journalists and the Observer Hodge Award. In 2000, winning the Prix Hachette gave him the opportunity to undertake a photographic expedition to Tadzhikistan. This work, which won him the 2002 Fondation HSBC pour la Photographie Award, was to mark a real turning-point in his approach. Revelling in his total freedom, he took a penetrating look at his work as an artist. « After being close to dropping everything in 2000, I decided to introduce plastic techniques into the pursuit of my documentary work. » Since then, freed from any conflict between documentary and artistic ambitions, his pictures have become compositions, uniting humanitarian, social and aesthetic preceptions. By continuing to take photographs, he seeks « to tell a story and to create an image, to compose a photographic image in a frame. » The « desire to experience other smells, other noises » takes him from Central Asia to meanders through Paris and he maintains that it is out of uncertainty that he is able to draw inspiration for his best work.
© Camille Meyer / Textuel 2006
