Show me a Hero and I’ll Photograph You a Tragedy
For the first time the current laureate is exhibited along side previous winners
Review by Andy Barnham
Launched in 2009 by the Fondation Carmignac, the Carmignac photojournalism award funds a laureate to visit an area of long term conflict or isolation where human rights and freedom of speech are regularly violated. Conducted between January and June the winner of the €50,000 award is granted time to thoroughly research and photograph their project with a view to stage an international touring exhibition upon their return with the Fondation’s help - who also commit to purchasing four photographs for their own art collection. This year, for the first time, the exhibition shows works by the current laureate, Newsha Tavakolian, alongside previous winners. Due to the topic of the upcoming project, Libya, the next winner has been awarded, but for reasons of safety and security will not be named until they return and the project completed.
Tavakolian is the first winner awarded a project taking part in her own native land, Iran, and captures vignettes of people’s lives who have each suffered personal tragedy and who feel isolated and marooned. Victims of the current political situation, Tavakolian started the project by looking at her subjects’ photo albums and realised that all the albums stopped when the individuals were 13 or 14 years old. Part of the project’s aim, with three to five photographs and GIF type video per subject, was to try and bring these albums up to date, whilst avoiding cliché. Tavaklian’s photography shows tragedy, both male and female; the lonely oversized girl living in Tehran - a city obsessed with beauty - sits alongside a café owner who sees only hopelessness in the faces of the students he serves.
Previous winners include the inaugural winner Kai Wiedenhöfer as well as Christophe Gin and Davide Monteleone, to name but a few. Wiedenhöfer visited Gaza in 2009 after the Israeli attacks photographing both the destroyed people and the buildings. In an age of internet journalism his interest was in the aftermath, not the immediate action, making a personal connection to how his own homeland of Germany must have looked at the end of World War 2. Monteleone’s photography explores the ambiguity of photography, using Chechnya as his social laboratory, highlighted perfectly by a photograph of what looks to be a child bride (a serious issue in Chechnya), but is in fact a photograph from a movie set. Gin travelled down the rivers of French Guiana, to cover the absurdity of those living under French rule where it has no practical use. A case in point being the father who failed to make the six day round trip to register his son’s birth which under French law means that 25 years later his son has no ID and therefore no nationality. Gin’s work visibly stands apart from the rest of the display due to the photographic techniques undertaken. Travelling during Guiana’s rainy season, he was forced to use digital photography due to the risk of film rotting. His work was then transferred from digital to film, the resulting images having more than a passing feel to HDR B&W. 
Carmignac Photojournalism Award: A Retrospective, organised by the Fondation Carmignac runs from 18th November to 13th December at the Saatchi Gallery. Admission free. www.saatchigallery.com/current/a_retrospective
Enquiries:
Fondation Carmignac/ www.fondation-carmignac.com
Saatchi Gallery, Duke of York’s HQ, King’s Road, London, SW3 4RY/ www.saatchigallery.com