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Sophie Huguenot

Awarded

Sophie Huguenot

'4 × 5', photo research

Photography

Jury report

Analogue and Topical
So­phie Huguenot has won the Swiss Fed­eral De­sign Award for her pro­ject '4 × 5'. The set­ting for her pho­tographs is the fast-mov­ing world of media cur­rent af­fairs cov­er­age, specif­i­cally the world of tele­vi­sion cov­er­age. The pho­tog­ra­pher is in con­stant con­tact with the news edit­ing team at TSR (Télévi­sion de la Su­isse Ro­mande) and ac­com­pa­nies tele­vi­sion crews as they re­port at local, na­tional and in­ter­na­tional lev­els.
Her large-for­mat pic­tures focus on 'in-be­tween' mo­ments and on de­tails that lie out­side of the train of events. So­phie Huguenot is in­ter­ested in the mo­ments in which, to all ap­pear­ances, noth­ing is hap­pen­ing - the mo­ments which take place away from the main event. How­ever, these pho­tographs are more than a peek be­hind the scenes - the pho­tog­ra­pher knows how to recog­nise and record the un­der­ly­ing hu­man­ity seen in small de­tails and ges­tures.
The pic­tures de­pict an­chor­women in a state of ex­treme con­cen­tra­tion shortly be­fore going on air, a sound en­gi­neer wait­ing in a green meadow, a de­serted of­fice, re­porters con­duct­ing in­ter­views, and nat­ural scenes which, on a sec­ond look, re­veal all kinds of tech­ni­cal equip­ment. The pic­ture cap­tions pro­vide in­di­ca­tions of what is hap­pen­ing, but, on the whole, they leave the viewer a great deal of space for in­ter­pre­ta­tion.
What all the pic­tures have in com­mon is that the events shown in them carry the charge of a 'be­fore' and an 'after'. The viewer can un­der­take a men­tal jour­ney that brings to­gether the enor­mous ef­fort and the con­verg­ing threads be­hind the brief broad­casts.
The large-for­mat ana­logue tech­nique forces the pho­tog­ra­pher's gaze to con­cen­trate en­tirely on sta­tion­ary ob­jects. The com­po­si­tion of the pic­ture fo­cuses our at­ten­tion on de­tails and on the mood of the mo­ment, whilst main­tain­ing a cer­tain dis­tance from the events. The im­ages ap­pear al­most iconic, so that one pic­tures them as ex­hibits in a mu­seum.

Biography

Sophie Huguenot
Born in
1982
Education
Photographer

Web

www.sophiehuguenot.ch

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