Françoise Huguier

Françoise Huguier © Cyril Zannettacci

France | Born in 1942

„As a photographer, I’m always
a witness in the background.
The last thing you want to do is step on
people’s toes. In the street,
on the beach, anywhere, there’s always
something that catches my eye. I pass
by, come back, stop, frame it in my
head, record everything and only then
do I take the picture.“

Françoise Huguier

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, Françoise Huguier has criss-crossed desert lands, from Burkina Faso to South Africa, from Benin to Ethiopia, exploring remote villages and great cities, buzzing with soulful, musical rhythm. In Mali, a country she loves deeply, she founded the Bamako “Rencontres Photo-graphiques”, sheding light on talented, yet unheard of artists and revealing talents like these of Seydou Keïta and Malik Sidibé, whose work has since garnered international acclaim.

She is a queen of photography, renowned for her work both in fashion and photojournalism, a work of endless creativity that we wanted to honour this year. 

A member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts since 2023, Françoise Huguier now shares her love of Africa with us in her exceptional book published by Odyssée, from which all exhibited images are derived. Writer Aya Cissoko praises Hugier in the book’s foreword: “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. It’s true, nothing escapes her gaze or her lens. Françoise Huguier aims to undress the world with her camera, and lay it bare. She strives 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 photographs are actual lessons in humanity.