The Roger Pic Award 2019 was awarded to Tomas van Houtryve (VII) for Lines and Lineage and Denis Dailleux (VU) for In Ghana – We shall meet again. Created by Roger Pic, photographer and director, copyright activist, the award that bears his name, honors and perpetuates his memory. The jury rewarded two photographers of the humanist vein. Both explore the belonging of a people to a territory and an identity, in praise of their dignity. The jury also noticed the work of Laetitia Vançon, At the end of the day, a tribute to the humanity of the community she photographs.
The jury was composed of Jane Evelyn Atwood, Florence Drouhet, Fabienne Pavia, Thierry Ledoux, Gerard Uferas, Bénédicte Van der Maar and Guy Seligmann.
Tomas van Houtryve, born in 1975, is a documentary photographer and conceptual artist.
Lines and Lineage confronts American collective amnesia with its Mexican past in the Wild West. Mexico ruled this vast territory, which runs from California to Wyoming and Texas during the first half of the 19th century. Yet, there is no photographic documentation of this period. To imagine what history might have looked like, Tomas van Houtryve photographed the landscapes of this first frontier between the United States and Mexico on glass plates, and made portraits of descendants of these first inhabitants.
Denis Dailleux was born in Angers in 1958, he lives in Paris.
For a few years now, I have been traveling regularly to Ghana, a country I discovered in Paul Strand’s book “Ghana: an african portrait”, which I ended up dreaming about. During my first trips, the Jamestown neighborhood had become central to my work. Situated by the sea, this historic area is home to the fishing port of Accra, Ghana’s capital. This small strip of sand, wedged between sea and city, also seems caught between tradition and modernity. The simplicity that prevails, the bodies that evolve there, the lights of the sea fascinated me and I found the images that I was looking for. Whenever I go back to Accra, Jamestown always gives me dazzling scenes. ”
Laetitia Vançon began photography as an autodidact in 2012.
At the end of the day by Laetitia Vançon
The portrait of a territory – the Outer Hebrides – through the prism of its younger generation. The Hebrides form an island chain 220 km long and 27,000 inhabitants, located in the north of Scotland, on the edge of what is still Europe. How to live, work, flourish in a sustainable way? Tied to this territory, as by an elastic band, the young leave but are tirelessly brought back to their islands. By attachment but also by fear of the unknown.
