There was an outlier at this year’s Paris Photo, the city’s annual fair of photographic art. It was a stand where nothing was for sale, but everything was up for discussion.
This corner of the Grand Palais, to which Paris Photo is being moved after its restoration, was devoted to Photo Elysée, a photography museum based in Lausanne, Switzerland. It introduced projects by the eight artists shortlisted for its celebrated biannual Prix Elysée in a gallery that offered intellectual as much as aesthetic engagement.
The photos dealt with complex issues such as climate change, resettlement, crime and parenthood. And unlike much of the rest of Paris Photo, no one here was talking about limited editions or prices.
“There are many prizes in the photography world, but most of them are celebrations of beautiful work,” says Nathalie Herschdorfer, director of Photo Elysée. “As president of the jury, I told the jury members, ‘Listen, we don’t want someone just staying at home and doing nice landscapes’.”
Pleasant vistas really don’t come into it. Several of the shortlisted artists delivered research-heavy endeavours that have involved delving into archives. Colombian photographer Felipe Romero Beltrán looks – obliquely – at the 20th-century movement of Colombians from rural regions to the cities.
Iranian artist Hannah Darabi explores her homeland’s history of dance, collaging historical images of celebrated belly dancers and cabaret singers. And Rahim Fortune, from the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, uses his own family’s scrapbooks to tell a visual story of “pain and memory” and the complicated DNA of American identity.
Conceptual material is presented by Swiss photographer Roger Eberhard, whose Meanwhile series records objects and places relating to small news items that coincide with world-changing historical events. Still lifes of a more disturbing kind can be found in the work of Camille Gharbi, a French artist whose quiet pictures of pharmaceuticals – tablet packs of stimulants, hypnotics, relaxants – relate to real cases where psychotropic substances were used in sexual assaults on women.
Meanwhile, Seif Kousmate, a self-taught Moroccan photographer, explores both toxic and benevolent masculinity in Men vs Fathers, adopting a “sensorial approach” that combines pictures with objects and textiles.
Work of a more documentary nature can be found in two series that tackle the most pressing global crises: environmental collapse and international migration. Russian-born American artist Anastasia Samoylova focuses on “altered landscapes, new green industries, climate-resilient architecture, and the people behind these transformative innovations”.
Rather than “ruin porn” – shooting a gloomy Berlin eco-cooperative was “not sexy” – she looks to write a positive chapter in a larger story of disarray. A broad survey of Samoylova’s work can also be found at the Saatchi Gallery in London until January 20.
The photographs of French photo-journalist Samuel Gratacap draw out another tentatively optimistic thread. Welcome Europa – a gallery of barbed wire, aid agencies and makeshift camps – follows those passing through “places of relegation in the Mediterranean and Balkans areas”, notes Gratacap. “By focusing on border crossings into the European Union… I seek to reveal the violence and obstacles that punctuate these trajectories, as well as to bear witness to the concrete solutions proposed by civil society in terms of welcoming and, sometimes, providing vital assistance to exiles.”
This year’s shortlist has been drawn from more than 750 applications from across the globe. The overall winner will be announced next summer, and will receive 80,000 Swiss francs (approximately £70,000) to finish their series and have a book produced on the finished project.
Now in its sixth edition, this is the first time the prize has been showcased at the prestigious commercial event in Paris.
“When you look at the works [at Paris Photo] you imagine a collector going ‘Oh, I’m going to have that in my dining room’. But here we give money to a project that needs time and deep research,” says Herschdorfer. “The prize should be ambitious. Let’s give the opportunity to someone who has something to say about the world.”
More details on the Prix Elysée at prixelysee.ch/en
