French photographer Sophie Calle wins Hasselblad Award

Mar 5, 2010, 13:28 GMT

Stockholm - French photographer and artist Sophie Calle was Friday named winner of the 30th Hasselblad Award for her 'groundbreaking, utterly original' work.

Calle is to receive the photography award, worth 1 million kronor (140,000 dollars), along with a diploma and a gold medal on October 30 in the Swedish west coast city of Gothenburg, organizers said.

A five-member international panel said Calle has 'been questioning and challenging the relationship between text and photography' for 30 years.

Calle 'depicts human vulnerability,' the jury said, adding that she has inspired a younger generation of artists.

Calle, born in 1953, won acclaim in 1980 for her project Suite Venitienne where she followed and documented a stranger visiting Venice, and published the photos along with a diary.

Other projects have included working as a chambermaid in a hotel - also in Venice - where she examined the lives of total strangers through their personal items.

The Hasselblad award was named after Victor Hasselblad (1906-1978) who invented the Hasselblad cameras that have been used in NASA space programmes and by a number of famous photographers.

Former Hasselblad Award winners include Robert Frank, Josef Koudelka, Richard Avedon, Sebastiao Salgado, Hiroshi Hamaya, Susan Meiselas, Ernst Haas, Irving Penn, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ansel Adams, and Lennart Nilsson.

In 2009 it was awarded to Robert Adams of the United States.

More information can be found on: www.hasselbladfoundation.org.