Françoise Huguier

Françoise
Huguier

biography

French photographer, member of Agence VU’, Françoise Huguier works and lives mainly in Paris.

In parallel to the worlds of politics, culture, and fashion, which she has been documenting since 1976, it is the world as a territory of encounters that Françoise Huguier began to explore at the end of the 1980s. Whether in Europe, Africa or Asia, she gazes with the same singular and graphic eye that never lacks humour. From fashion photography to reportage, from snapshots to staging, Françoise Huguier’s photography documents and reveals the diversity of the world, its territories and societies.

In 1989, she travels the African continent in the footsteps of Michel Leiris. This inaugural journey inspires her first book “Sur les traces de l’Afrique fantôme” (Actes Sud, 1990) – awarded by the Villa Médicis hors les murs. Thanks to the strong links forged during this first trip, Françoise Huguier sets up the first Bamako Biennial of Photography (Mali) in 1994 that aims to promote African contemporary photography internationally. She initiates a photographic work on the intimacy of women in Burkina Faso and Mali (“Secrètes“, Actes Sud, 1996).

In 1993, she travels through Russian territory with “En route pour Behring” (ed Maeght): a diary of her solitary trip to Siberia, awarded by the Villa Médicis hors les murs and a Word Press Photo. Continuing her research on intimacy, social life and the traces of history, she spends two months a year, between 2000 and 2007, in the communal apartments of Saint Petersburg, revealing the survivals of the Soviet world as much as the meanders inherent in living together (“Kommunalki“, ed. Actes Sud, 2008 and “Kommunalka“, feature documentary, 2008).

In the 2000s, South-East Asia becomes one of her favorite destinations. Fifty years after leaving Cambodia, she returns in 2004 to the footstep of her childhood as a prisoner of the Viet Minh (“J’avais huit ans“, Actes Sud, 2005). During an artist’s residency in Singapore in 2009, she begins a journey to the heart of the middle classes in Southeast Asia; a work awarded in 2011 by the Prix de photographie de Académie des beaux-arts.

She continues her study from 2010 to 2012 with “Vertical/Horizontal, Interior/Exterior” (Singapore, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur), before extending it to the postmodern societies of Southeast Asia: in 2014, the hijabistas in Indonesia and the KPOP movement in Malaysia, then the upheavals of Seoul society (“Virtual Seoul“, Actes Sud, 2016 as part of the France-Korea crossover years (2014-2015). A work that has been exhibited at the Museum of the History of Seoul (2016), at the Pavillon Carré Baudouin in Paris (2016) and at the Olympic Museum of Lausanne (2017).

In 2017, she exhibits for the Month of Photography, “Grand Paris. L’approche intimiste de Françoise Huguier”. A work produced in collaboration with the Society of the Grand Paris, for which she went for three years to meet the families living near the futures Gare Stations. That same year, she produced a project on the social housing in Deauville.

In 2020, Françoise Huguier is at the limelight at the Quai Branly Museum of Paris with “Les Curiosités du monde de Françoise Huguier”. An exhibit conceived as travel diary that presents a selection of unusual objects she has gleaned from all over the world. Objects that have been as much a source of inspiration for her images and which she shares in “La Curieuse”, a book published by Filigranes Editions (2020).

Awarded by numerous prestigious prizes, Françoise Huguier receives the insignia of “Officier des Arts et des Lettres” in 2012. Regularly exhibited in France and around the world, her work was the subject of a retrospective at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in 2014. In 2018, Reporters Without Borders devotes to her an album from its “100 photos for press freedom” collection. In parallel as her photographic career, she is also regularly asked to curate exhibitions and biennials (Photoquai, Mois de la photographie à Paris, Luang Prabang Biennial, etc.).

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