Jérémie Danon, a 5th year student, is the first winner of the Saif Carte Blanche Student Grant for his project UTOPIA - TOPIC.
"In the middle of the desert and the rocky mountains, on Palestinian land under the British mandate, Jewish men and women built a village called a kibbutz where equality and community reigned, free from violence and oppression. Private property was abolished, industry and authoritarianism were forbidden.
Eighty years later, gates and fences have been erected around the kibbutz. Its inhabitants no longer live together, but side by side. Instead of a common room, there is a supermarket. Synthetic grass has replaced the flower gardens, and the crops have been privatised. The younger generation has left for the cities, leaving the older generation alone and ageing. Women from the Philippines are their caregivers.
My grandfather was one of the founders, and he often told me the story of Matzuva as a dream come true. But what about today? What remains of the community's ambitions for collective life? I have come to question the old and new inhabitants about the often radical transformations of this collective utopia.
I want to accompany the video I am making with prints of archival images and an edition presenting some of the sequences created with the inhabitants of the place. The Saif Carte Blanche Étudiants grant will allow me to deploy these archive images in an installation highlighting the contrast between the past history of the place and what it has become today". - Jérémie Danon
In 2022, Picto Foundation is associating the Saif with the 6th edition of the Carte Blanche Students programme. With the support of the Saif, one of the winners of the programme will receive a grant of 3,000 euros for the development of a new or ongoing project. At the same time, the Picto Foundation provides the award-winning photographer with personalised support to develop his or her project with the laboratory's experts and to give it visibility to professional audiences through the distribution channels of the Picto group.
To find out more about the Foundation
