France • Born in 1942
Emotive Africa

Françoise Huguier’s first real encounter with the African continent occurred in 1989, when she set off in the footsteps of writer and ethnologist Michel Leiris. This rite of passage quickly became a love at first sight experience for Françoise Huguier, who was captivated by the mosaic of people she encountered and photographed with her unique radiance and attention to detail. Since then, from Burkina Faso to South Africa and from Benin to Ethiopia, Françoise Huguier has crisscrossed desert lands, lost villages and great cities vibrating to a soulful, musical rhythm. In Mali, a country she loves deeply, she founded the Rencontres Photographiques de Bamako in 1994 bringing to light previously little know great artist : discovering the talent of Seydou Keïta and Malik Sidibé, whose work has since garnered international acclaim.

She is a grand lady of photography, renowned both for her work in fashion and for her immensely creative photojournalism, whom we wanted to honour this year. A member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts since 2023, Françoise Huguier is now sharing her love of Africa with us in an exceptional book published by Odyssée, from which all the images in this exhibition have been taken. In the book’s preface, writer Aya Cissoko pays tribute to her, remarking that « Nothing escapes her trained eye. There’s no need for artifice. She doesn’t care about posturing or pretence, she knows what she wants and she gets it. Yes, nothing escapes her gaze or lens. What she wants is to undress the world with her camera, to lay it bare. To show it in all its harshness and roughness, unembellished. Her work bears witness to worlds past and present, and gives us a glimpse of the world to come. Françoise Huguier’s photographs break down the boundaries of geography, race, class and gender. ». Her images are transformed into real lessons in humanity.

JARDIN SAINT-VINCENT

Françoise Huguier