It is a unique prize, the largest prize in photography in the entire world. Of course, I'm happy, says the French artist to TT.
Sophie Ristelhueber has spent over 30 years traveling to war zones to photograph the scars – or metaphorical wounds, as she also calls them – that conflicts leave behind in the landscape. She has been to Beirut, Iraq, the Balkans, and Kuwait, and has photographed conflict-ravaged landscapes, both on foot and from the air.
Searching for stitches
Her photographs are just as current today as when they were taken.
War is an endless circle of destruction and reconstruction, she notes.
Sophie Ristelhueber has also photographed physical scars on people.
I wanted to use the body as a complement to the landscape, she says.
She asked surgeons at a military hospital in Paris to contact her when the "right" kind of scars appeared:
I didn't want to show open wounds, but stitches, to show healed bodies. I left a sketch for the surgeons so they would know what I was looking for, says Sophie Ristelhueber, whose images culminated in the exhibition "Every one".
Wants to broaden the image
The next project is to photograph dust.
We will all turn to dust in the end, but on the way there, we also leave a lot of dust behind, and that's what I want to capture.
When asked why scars keep reappearing in her images, she answers with a laugh:
It's a big question that I've never gotten an answer to! I've asked my psychologist, but she doesn't have a good answer either.
Ristelhueber has also photographed landscapes with other types of scars, such as climate change and an area with sinkholes by the Dead Sea.
She has no political agenda and doesn't want to be perceived as a journalist.
That's not how I work, I don't want to do reportage that's published a week later. My images are sometimes shown many years later.
The only similarity is that she borrows journalism's working tools, the camera, and its favorite theme, war.
I don't think my art can change the world, but those who see it might get a broader view of shocking events.
Despite Sophie Ristelhueber having been on the move for large parts of her life, she has never exhibited in Scandinavia. The exhibition in Gothenburg, in connection with the award ceremony in October, will be her first.
It's not easy to summarize 45 years of work. The only thing I can say is that the exhibition will represent who I am.
Vivvi Alström/TT
Facts: Sophie Ristelhueber
TT
Name: Sophie Ristelhueber
Born: 1949 in Paris
Background: Sophie Ristelhueber has since the 1980s visited war and conflict areas to photograph the scars that remain in a landscape after a war. She has been to, among other places, Beirut, Kuwait, Bosnia, and Iraq.
Ristelhueber's work questions the concept of scars on the body and in the landscape.
Her work has been exhibited, among other places, at MoMA in New York, Tate Modern and Imperial War Museum in London, and at Centre Pompidou in Paris.
The Hasselblad Prize is two million kronor.
The prize winner's work will be shown later at the Hasselblad Center in Gothenburg.
The Hasselblad Foundation's motivation for choosing Sophie Ristelhueber as the 2025 Hasselblad Prize winner:
"For forty-five years, the French artist Sophie Ristelhueber has created a consistent and unique artistic oeuvre where she explores landscapes and territories, both public and private. Through her series from war-torn areas, she has challenged journalistic photography and developed her own visual language. The scars of violence – on the ground, in the human body, and in architecture – are at the center of her powerful and meticulously composed images, not least in the acclaimed series that depict conflicts in the Middle East and the Balkans. Ristelhueber's large-scale photographs are often presented in unconventional ways and combined with video and sound in site-specific installations."
