PHILIPPE DUDOUIT

Philippe Dudouit’s work is founded on in depth historic, geopolitical and cartographic documentation, research and analysis, resulting in long term photographic studies on the socio-political evolution of the Sahelo-Saharian zone since 2008.

He graduated from Vevey School of Photography. Dudouit has been the recipient of a Kiefer Hablitzel Prize in 2004. In 2008, he was a first prize winner in the World Press Photo competition for his work on the PKK fighters in Northern Iraq, and in 2009 he was awarded third prize on  his images of the Tuareg rebellions in Mali and Niger. In 2011 his work in progress  Dynamics of Dust received a Swiss Design Award and in 2013 he was a Magnum Emergency Fund grantee.

Dudouit documents the new relationships that historically nomadic autochthonous Saharan inhabitants of the Sahelo Saharan band have forged with a territory they cannot pass through freely, or safely, anymore. Being a former tourist paradise now off limits to foreigners, due to a burgeoning abduction industry, made the former dire economic situation even worse, cutting off large parts of the population from an income essential to them.

Dudouit’s practice embodies hybridity, in the fusion of classic analogue large format camera technique and the use of digital technologies, but also by combining innovative documentary photography sensibility with the tableau-type composition of his environmental portraits.

Dynamics of Dust was published in 2019 (Patrick Frey editions).