Portrait of Sophie Ristelhueber: © Léa Crespi
Congratulations to Sophie Ristelhueber, the 2025 Hasselblad Award Laureate!
The Hasselblad Award is the world’s largest photography award, consisting of SEK 2,000,000, a gold medal, and a Hasselblad camera. The Hasselblad Foundation chose Ristelhueber as their 2025 laureate for:
A precise, consistent, and unique body of work exploring landscapes and territories – both public and private – defines the artistic career of French artist Sophie Ristelhueber spanning forty-five years. Through her series, created in war-torn regions, she challenged the field of journalistic photography, developing her own visual language. The traces and scars of violence – on land, the human body, and architecture – are central to her powerful, tightly cropped images, most notably in her acclaimed series focusing on 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.
Sophie Ristelhueber says, “As you know, one does not die from being unloved, but from being unbelieved, an old friend of mine used to say when we were talking about the artist’s condition. What is at stake is that we put everything on the line, inventing new patterns without knowing if they will ever resonate. And this is why, for me as an artist, this prestigious award holds such a deep significance.”
Lebanon, Kuwait, the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, and the West Bank – places marked by conflict often make up the core of Sophie Ristelhueber’s work. Avoiding the sensational, she instead captures an emotional intensity in the silent, enduring traces of human presence and activity. A recurring theme in her artistic practice is humanity’s perpetual cycle of creation and destruction, followed by renewal. The photographs in her series are meticulously selected fragments of a larger narrative, where the viewer is invited to create the story.
Sophie Ristelhueber was born in 1949 in Paris, where she still lives and works. She studied literature at the Sorbonne, with a focus on the literary movement le nouveau roman – the new novel – which challenged traditional narrative structures through fragmented storytelling and an emphasis on detail. These principles have influenced Ristelhueber’s photographic practice, where she highlights traces and details rather than depicting the actual event. Her literary background is also evident in her acclaimed publications. Ristelhueber’s artist books are often small in format, incorporating text fragments as an integral part of the visual narrative. She has personally designed and published many of her books in limited editions, which have all since become sought-after collectors’ items.
The Hasselblad laureate is honoured with a solo exhibition at the Hasselblad Center in Gothenburg from 11 October 2025 until 18 January 2026, along with a series of events during Hasselblad Award Week, including: a seminar in collaboration with the County Administrative Board of Västra Götaland and a concert with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra on 9 October; an opening reception, book launch, and formal award ceremony on 10 October in Gothenburg; and an artist talk at Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm on 15 October.
To find out more please go to the direct link.
