Guardians, 2023
The role of the guardians, though omnipresent in our society and recently revealed as indispensable, is far more complex than it seems. In this photographic work, Rip Hopkins explores its many variations, presenting us successively with forest guardians, shepherds, policemen, childcare workers, monks and receptionists. In so doing, the photographer highlights both the plurality and the uniqueness of the guarding profession. Guarding means protecting, defining limits and regulating, as a shepherd does with his animals. It also means observing from the sidelines, while exercising a certain authority as an essential component of the social machinery. Finally, the role of the guardian is not limited to authoritarian constraint: it often involves a form of care, as in the role of animal carers, or transmission, in the case of cultural mediators.
In this series, Rip Hopkins also introduces us to the various spaces of guardianship, reminding us that to be a guardian is always necessarily to be a guardian of. The people photographed here are anchored in their workplaces, both natural and cultural, in the Alpes-Maritimes region: from the coast to the Lac Supérieur in the Vallée des Merveilles, from the Fragonard museum in Grasse to the Villa Kérylos in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, passing through the Roya valley, the Cathédrale de Sainte-Réparate in Nice and the Musée des Merveilles in Tende. Through the guardians’ portraits, a whole picture of the Maralpine region is drawn.
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