ISEM PRIZESFOR DOCUMENTARYPHOTOGRAPHY20

203rd

edi

tion

ISEM PRIZESIMAGESINGULIÈRES / ETPA / MEDIAPART FOR DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY

THE PARTNERS

ImageSingulières is the documentary photography event, created in 2009 by CéTàVOIR and directed by Valerie Laquittant and Gilles Favier. An international programme of exhibitions, films and conferences around documentary images is offered free of charge at a dozen sites in Sète. Emerging photographers, new writing or well-known works revisited, nothing is left out as long as there is food for thought about the world, with rigour, curiosity but also conviviality.

Founded in 1974, the ETPA is a higher education institute of photography and game design, based in Toulouse and Rennes and led by Corine Fransen. Part of the Icônes network, ETPA trains high level professionals putting them at the heart of the contemporary artistic scene of professional photography and game design. Long time partner of ImageSingulières, ETPA encourages and supports its artistic approach.

Mediapart is an online general information news outlet launched in March 2008. The paper’s goal is to be a point of reference for news denied by four words: quality, independence, relevance, exclusivity. Its executive director is Marie-Helene Smiejan and the president and director of publication is Edwy Plenel. Editorial responsibility is shared between Carine Fouteau and Stéphane Alliès. Since its launch, Mediapart is engaged in the defence of photojournalism and documentary photography and initiated and co-led with ImageSingulières the France Vu d’Ici photography project (2014-2017).

> Valérie Laquittant, Director, ImageSingulières, > Sophie Dufau, Editor in chief, Mediapart, > Pierre Barbot, president of CéTàVOIR,> Corine Fransen, Head of ETPA,> Fabienne Pavia, Publisher, Le Bec en l’Air.

How many talented photographers, in France or elsewhere, lack the means to finish a project? How many, after spending several months documenting a subject, stop. Because their subject is more complex than they had thought, because it requires more time than they imagined. Photographers then go on to other things hoping to find a more lucrative story, requiring less of their own funding.

It is in order to support these difficult projects that the ImageSingulières festival, the news service Mediapart and ETPA, the photography and game design school in Toulouse, have committed themselves since 2018 to two awards :

The ISEM Grand Prize is open to photographers around the world. With an endowment of 8000 euros, it is intended to help complete a documentary project already in progress. The prize is to be used to finalise the winning work. Once the winners are announced, the project will be presented in portfolio form on Mediapart and once completed, will be exhibited at ImageSingulières.

The second prize, ISEM Young Photographer Prize is for those under 26 years of age residing in France. With an endowment of 2000 euros, it is also to support a work in progress and will be published on Mediapart. The winner may also attend a 3rd year Masterclass at the ETPA.

THE PANEL

Romain LAURENDEAU

ISEM Grand Prize 2019 was unanimously awarded to Romain Laurendeau for his project Generation Mister Nice Guy: Palestinian youth under the influence which deals with the ravages of synthetic cannabis among the young residents of the occupied territories.

Israelians and Palestinians live side by side, sometimes intermingled, but always in partitioned areas. Almost everything differentiates them and yet, in recent years, drug use has continued to increase on both sides. The latest fashionable substance for youth is the “Mister Nice Guy”.

Mister Nice Guy is a synthetic cannabis 50 to 100 times more powerful than marijuana and much more dangerous. It comes in the form of grass onto which various products have been sprayed: acetone, pesticides, speed and sometimes even rat poison. The high is short and violent and addiction is immediate. The impact on health is disastrous: kidney and liver problems, dizziness, delirium and paranoia, depression.

This drug first arrived quietly in the Palestinian Occupied Territories : via Israel where it was legal up to 2013 and very popular with young conscripts in the Israeli army. Since its introduction, labs have grown up like mushrooms in the neighbouring West Bank.

The association Al Sadiq’s detox centre is in Al’Eizariya in the West Bank, a few kilometres as the crow flies from Jerusalem, but on the other side of the wall. It is found in one of the numerous Palestinian “buffer zones”, left to themselves, and among the most affected by drug trafficking and use. It is one of the only treatment centres in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. It is also the oldest and the toughest. With its practice of total confinement and withdrawal without drugs, il accepts around 30 patients for periods of several months. These addicts are younger and younger, and almost all have succumbed to “Mister Nice Guy“.

WINNER OF THE 2019 ISEM GRAND PRIZE

Mister Nice Guy

2019 FINALISTSFour other projects were praised by the panel.

Marion Gronier for her series American Monuments, portraits of communities of the descendants of the founding peoples of the United States of America.

Scarlett Coten for her series Plan américain, on masculinity in the United States.

Nicola Bertasi for his work on the consequences of Agent Orange in Vietnam.

and Julien Chatelin pour his series Promised Land.

2018 WINNERSLe Prix ISEM Jeune Photographe 2018 a été attribue à Valentin Russo pour sa série Pendant que tu dors.

ISEM 2018 Grand Prize was awarded to John Trotter for his work entitled No Agua, No Vida.

The 2018 Young Photographer Prize was awarded to Valentin Russo for his series Pendant que tu dors.

After training as a photographer, Romain contracted kerataconus, an ailment that progressively deforms the cornea. During the years of this illness, he explored intimacy, through introspective series which were fed by his doubts.

In 2009, a corneal transplant saved his sight. It was a liberation. He was overwhelmed by a thirst for freedom and the desire to understand the world. Since then he hasn’t stopped travelling in order to document the human condition in all its aspects, social, economic and political. In Senegal, for 3 years he worked on topical subjects, in particular gold miners, which won him several awards, and exhibitions in Paris and Japan. The same year, his work on the Senegal elections was chosen for the Bayeux-Calvados War Correspondents Prize.

Since 2014, he has worked on a long-term and fundamental project on a country little covered by the French press: Algeria. Mainly interested in an Algerian youth that is bored, caught between the weight of a history it hasn’t chosen and a future that it thinks doesn’t exist, he won the AFD prize, the Camille Lepage prize, the Roger Pic prize and the Pierre and Alexandra Boulat prize for his work in Algeria. He was also present at the Visa festival for the Image in 2015 and 2016 and exhibited many times.

ROMAIN LAURENDEAU

The 2019 ISEM Young Photographer prize was awarded to Maxime Mattys for his series 2091 - The Ministry of Privacy.

This work explores the mechanisms behind the facial recognition technology used by the Chinese government to spy on and oppress the Uighur inhabitants of the Xinjiang region. This is part of a series with three distinct chapters (the Ministry of Privacy, the Ministry of Love and the Ministry of Truth) which document the different aspects of Chinese oppression. The titles make reference to the strategies used to control populations as imagined in Orwell’s dystopian novel.

The panel appreciated the strong approach taken by Maxime Matthys and the way the photographer superposed, on his street photos taken hidden from the local authorities, the results of the facial recognition programmes used by Beijing.

This work has since been widely rewarded and diffused in the international press.

2091 – The Ministry of Privacy

Maxime MATTHYS WINNER OF 2019 ISEM YOUNG PHOTOGRAPHER PRIZE

www.imagesingulieres.comwww.etpa.comwww.mediapart.fr

http://prixisem.imagesingulieres.com

Information / Regional press contactLucie Guitardguitard.cetavoir@orange.fr04 67 18 27 54

National press contactRelations MediaCatherine & Prune Philippot cathphilippot@relations-media.comprunephilippot@relations-media.com01 40 47 63 42

2020 PROGRAMME

• Candidatures accepted from 13 January to 29 March

• Finalists announced and Prizes awarded Saturday 23 May during ImageSingulières in Sète

• Screening of the winners’ and finalists’ works Saturday 23 May during ImageSingulières in Sète

• Publication of the two winning portfolios on the Mediapart website