Focus on the UPP 2023 Award winners

We are very pleased to present the two winners of the second edition of the UPP Award and their projects.

- In the UPP Member category: Vincent Catala with his "Île de la Saudade" series

- In the Non-Member category : Juliette Pavy with her series ""Spiralkampagnen", forced sterilization of women in Greenland."

Member winner: "Île de la Saudade" - Vincent Catala

The images I present here are part of an ongoing series entitled "île de la saudade". The title refers to the mythical archipelago imagined by Portuguese philosopher Eduardo Lourenço, where the inhabitants are said to be predestined to flee from themselves, as if inhabited by a permanent state of inner exile. Starting with the political tensions that began in 2014, and continuing with the democratic backlash embodied by Bolsonarism, this work involved probing the roots of a malaise that is undoubtedly older than this ten-year cycle of crisis. To do this, I chose to explore the margins of the cities I have successively inhabited: Rio de Janeiro's West Zone, Greater São Paulo, Brasília and the Federal District. Territories without borders or centers, neither miserable nor rich, that are as anonymous as they are emblematic of Brazil. For although they are never shown, they can be found identically all over the country.

In these spaces, something seems out of place. The sensation of emptiness creates a silent tension, the origin of which I question in my images. Does the democratic crisis alone explain this state of affairs? Or do the roots of this disenchantment lie deeper, in a country that refuses to transcend its history? Where habituation to inequality seems to reflect a resigned fatality from the past, all the more unjust because it seems destined to repeat itself endlessly. This is what Brazilian writer João Paolo Cuenca explains in the text he dedicates to this project: "In Brazil, we flee ourselves without traveling elsewhere. In a country that has not undergone a revolution, progress is an illusion, rights are not guaranteed and despair never explodes.Its inhabitants are prisoners of an infinite present, with no awareness of the past and no prospect of a truly new future."

Photo credit: Vincent CATALA

Vincent Catala biography:

French photographer, I trained as a self-taught photographer from 2006 before becoming a member of Agence VU in 2014. Over the last decade I have lived and worked in Brazil, from where I have brought back a long personal work in progress entitled "île de la saudade". Now that I've settled back in France, I'd like to finalize and present this project.
Sensitive to long-term approaches, I'm interested in territories that are specific in both their singularity and their complexity, and which reveal a certain representation of the world. The simultaneous exercise of time and immersion are for me the essential conditions for keeping intact the dual desire that made me become a photographer: to bear witness and to see differently. In both my personal work and my commissions, I explore the relationship between the individual and his or her space, and reflect on their subjective representations: solitude, resilience, freedom...

Regularly published (M le magazine du Monde, Télérama, Fisheye, Revista ZUM. Air France Magazine...), my work has been exhibited in Paris, Amman, Brasília, Tbilissi and Cadaqués.

At the 2017 edition of Paris Photo, Galerie VU presented some of my work on Brazil. The Moreira Salles Institute did the same two years later in São Paulo. The "île de la saudade" series I present here is as yet unpublished. Editions Dunes is devoting a monograph to it, due out in June 2024.

Laureate Non-member ""Spiralkampagnen", forced sterilization of Greenland women." - Juliette Pavy

This documentary photography project aims to shed light on the campaign of forced sterilization of Greenlandic women carried out by Danish settlers from 1966 to 1975, which drastically reduced the island's population to an estimated 57,000. It left indelible traces on the lives of many Inuit women and their families. Taboo for several decades, the "spiral campaign" (named after the IUD that was forcibly inserted in teenage girls, many of whom were still virgins) was exposed by two Danish journalists in 2022. An official investigation is underway until 2024 to shed full light on this period.

Juliette Pavy / Collectif Hors Format.

Biography Juliette Pavy:

A French documentary photographer, Juliette is a graduate of the photojournalism program at EMI CFD in Paris, as well as a biology engineer.

She regularly collaborates with the national press such as Le Monde, Libération, Le Figaro... In parallel, she is developing a documentary approach to photography on environmental and societal subjects.

She co-founded the Collectif Hors Format. In 2021, she was one of the photographers selected for a major commission by the BnF and the French Ministry of Culture.

Juliette Pavy / Collectif Hors Format.

The UPP Award

As a reminder, it was with the aim of supporting two professional photographers in the conception and realization of a quality photographic project that the UPP organized this free, open-themed competition.

On Monday September 19, a jury composed of Laure Bouvet (founder of Well Done John, art buyer), Julie Champin (photographer's agent, Regard Suspendu, and co-founder of the mentoring program Les Filles de la Photo), Guillaume Cuvillier (professional photography marketing manager at SONY), Sylvie Hugues (photography consultant, Festival du Regard, HSBC prize), Pierre Langlade (former head of the Nouvel Obs photo department ), and Lucie Sassiat, photographer and vice-president of UPP deliberated and awarded the two prizes.

The first prize for a UPP member photographer, Vincent Catala, in the amount of 4000€. The second for a non-member photographer, Juliette Pevy, in the amount of 2000€.

The aim of these grants is to help the winners produce their subject and present it at a joint exhibition to be held in 2024 at the Maison des photographes, UPP's headquarters.

The two prizewinners succeed Alexis Vettoretti and Marion Péhée, winners for 2022.

© Photo credit: Betül Balkan