Created in 2020, the Print Award was born from the meeting between the desire of the International College of Photography to promote the art of photographic printing and the passion of the collectors Florence and Damien Bachelot for photographic prints. This prize, organized by the International College of Photography in partnership with the BnF and the French Society of Photography, celebrates the excellence of an artistic profession, such as the research carried out by photographic artists in the laboratory. This research is materialized by the elaboration of a workbook which integrates by donation the collections of the BnF. For this second edition, two categories have been opened: one dedicated to the pair formed by the printer and the photographer and the other to photographers who carry out their own prints.
Guillaume Geneste and Bernard Plossu, 2021 winners in the “photographer / printer duo” category
Guillaume Geneste worked as a printer with Marc Bruhat, at the Sillages workshop and then at Contrejour editions in Paris before creating his own laboratory in 1996: La Chambre Noire. In 2020, he published “Tirage à mains nues” with Lamaindonne editions.
Bernard Plossu was born in 1945 in Vietnam. During a trip to the Sahara with his father in 1958, he took his first photographs using a Kodak Brownie Flash. He moved to Mexico in 1965 and from this stay was born The Mexican Journey, a photographic work published fifteen years later. In 1988, he received the National Grand Prize for Photography and his work was the subject of a retrospective at the National Museum of Modern Art – Center Pompidou.
“I have been printing Bernard Plossu’s photographs for exactly thirty years. […]The relationships that bind a printer to a long-term photographer are the richest that I have been able to experience, because they require complicity, trust and understanding between the two protagonists, where the “texture” of prints is to be defined from the start of the relationship and must not fail over time. […]. Between printer and photographer, technique is above all a matter of understanding, interpretation, gestures. The photographers come to see a printer and the relationship ris maintained , if they get along well, if the printer is able to make prints where the photographer is happy with the work.” Guillaume Geneste.
Guillaume Zuili, 2021 winner in the “photographer” category
Guillaume Zuili is a Franco-American photographer, born in 1965, based in Los Angeles. Active member of the VU’ agency, he worked in India between 1986 and 1995 and in 2003 published his first book Pondicherry, Chandernagor, Mahé, Karibal and Yanaon with Editions du Chêne. For several years, he has been illustrating his obsession with the American myth, by exploring various printing processes. Recently with the Urban Jungle series, he combines the use of the view camera with that of the Lith developer, creating images with a timeless aesthetic.
“I sometimes wonder if I’m not more of a printer than a photographer. Shooting becoming almost a pretext to be able to be in the laboratory and make my prints. […] The photographic print is for me the very essence of photography.” Guillaume Zuili
Exhibition
La photographie à tout prix
Une année de prix photographiques à la BnF
November 23, 2021 – February 20, 2022
BnF I François-Mitterrand
Allée Julien Cain
Quai François-Mauriac 75013 PARIS
East entrance
Tuesday to Saturday 9 a.m. > 8 p.m.
Sunday 1 p.m. > 7 p.m.
Monday 2 p.m. > 8 p.m.
Closed on public holidays
Free admission
