Where tomorrow’s big lensers face off, visuals collide

Hyères Fashion and Photography Festival 2014
By Tempe Nakiska | Art | 25 April 2014
Above:

Arnaud Lajeunie (France), three pieces from the series ‘Water Meets Color, Color Meets Water’, 2011

This year marks the 29th Hyères International Fashion and Photography Festival, spotlighting ten emerging fashion designers and ten young photographers from around the globe. The festival is well known for the wealth of fashion names it has churned out over the years (from Viktor & Rolf to Alexandre Matthieu, Sébastien Meunier and Oscar Suleyman), but turn your eyes to the parallel photographic category and bear witness to a thrilling yearly journey across the vivid works of hugely talented young shooters at the start of their respective careers.

Photography curator Raphaëlle Stopin here reflects on an impressive line-up of photographers who have previously walked the festival’s halls and shares an insight into the latest creatives off the rank.

Tempe Nakiska: You’ve been working as curator on the photographic side of the festival for twelve years now. You must have seen a lot of great photographic talent come through in that time?
Raphaëlle Stopin: Each year sees its new shortlist, and with it, ten photographers who have been selected for their vision, for their work is opening new perspectives on photography. Amongst the previous competitors were Grégoire Alexandre, Charles Fréger, Nico Krebs and Taiyo Onorato, Anouk Kruithof, Jaap Scheeren… I could go on and on. It’s quite interesting to look back and appreciate the path they all made from the time they were selected.

TN: What kind of themes are explored in the work of this year’s ten nominees?
RS: I would say they are chosen for each of them is developing his/her own world, so to say a strong entity, and that very often it is very much rooted in their close environment, which they transform and renew. As an example, Petros Efstathiadis, last year’s winner, has been working from his native village (where he shoots all his photographs and built his installations), and from this very familiar scene and environment, has been able to tell about a broader reality, Greece and Europe,all this by constructing these poetic objects.

TN: How do you choose the nominees? What are you looking for?
RS: The style always serves a purpose. When I said that style matters, it is in the sense of the tone of their voice, the one they chose and built to give shape to their world.

TN: The festival is a real platform for new photographic talent. How would you describe the work you look at each year? Does it fall into one category more often than others?
RS: People often ask me what kind of photography best represents the Hyères competition. I would say that it concerns young authors without a specific genre. You can have portraits, still natures, documentaries as well as fashion. I use the word ‘author’ on purpose since our objective is to identify ‘visions’ formulated in personal and constructed forms of expression.
So what are we trying to bring out, promote and even defend here in the specific context of the fashion and photography festival? We are not trying to privilege one genre over the other and this question, as I said, is in the end secondary.

Proof of this is that fashion as such is seldom represented in this competition (simply because today, magazines with their cold feet keep their doors closed to young photographers who of course are strongly dependent on the access they have to stylist-hairdresser-make-up teams). Nevertheless we are still very close to the world of fashion and much more so than if we limited the competition to the fashion photo genre alone. My understanding of the ‘world of fashion’ is first and foremost a world of shapes, compositions, fabric and colours. A fashion designer can be much closer creatively speaking with a landscape photographer than with a so-called fashion photographer. And while this dialogue is becoming scarce with limited opportunities, it is still possible.

TN: Can you give an example of this?
RS: The recent collaboration between Charles Fréger and Felipe Oliveira Baptista is a good example of this. And it’s probably to assert the validity of our approach that this year, we decided to appoint these two former Hyères award winners as president of our jury. The idea is to show that fashion and photography (like any other form of art) still contemplate and fuel each other. It’s a form of understanding, recognition between creators, each one moving forward, constructing its language and expression sometimes finding an echo. Charles Fréger liked Felipe Oliveira Baptista’s masks and Felipe liked Charles’ portraits in uniforms and they had the opportunity to exchange and find ground to work together.

29th Hyères International Fashion and Photography Festival 2014 runs from 25th-28th April. 


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