Meeting in Paris on September 10, 2018, the jury of the Virginia Prize awarded the Prize to Cig Harvey, British photographer, chosen among the twenty-one preselected files among 398 proposals from 43 countries.
“I have always apprehended the world viscerally, but after a very serious car accident in 2015, and the news of last year, an acute awareness of fragility permeates my present work. You an Orchestra (You, an orchestra, you, a bomb) deals with my relationship to life. It is a work on the future, on the attention to the present and how it is enjoyed. The goal is to make everyday icons and consider life on the borderline between magic and disaster. That life can rock in an instant, sinks me; another way to have … breath away. “Cig Harvey
“Cig Harvey is aiming just right. It is with these words that the jury unanimously hailed the precision and accuracy of the laureate’s work. Cig Harvey submitted to the Virginia Prize a demanding series with remarkable artistic power. Compared to an archer, the photographer knew, with each shot, to reach its target, by capturing the right moment, revealing by a framing always surprising, a truth, an intensity, a shock.
The jury consisted of:
Caroline Broué, journalist and producer at France Culture,
Lucy Conticello, director of photography at M Magazine du Monde,
Hugues de Saint-Simon, Secretary General of the Philharmonie de Paris,
Rémy Fenzy, director of the National School of Photography of Arles,
Léonard Gremaud, 2018 graduate of the Geneva School HEAD,
Clémentine Larroumet, be-poles editions,
Sylvia Schildge, visual artist, founder of the Virginia Prize.
Cig Harvey, lauréate du Prix Virginia 2018
Du 10 octobre au 28 octobre 2018
Espace Oppidum
30 rue de Picardie
75003 Paris
