Alinka ECHEVERRIA & Xiao ZHANG
Winners of the 2011 HSBC prize

The HSBC prize for photography was created in 1985 under the auspices of the Fondation de France. Aimed at the promotion of the “new generation of photographers”, the prize is open to any non-published photographer, without age or nationality criteria. The first selection is made by an artistic director, one that changes every year, whose mission is to choose ten dossiers that will be submitted to the executive committee and who will then designate the winners.

Winning will consist of having their photographic essay published by Actes Sud, in the series Collection du Prix HSBC pour la Photographie, a touring exhibition of their work in four cultural centers in France and/or abroad, and the acquisition by HSBC France of a minimum of six photographs from each winner for its photography collection.

The artistic direction in 2011 has been entrusted to Agnès Sire, Head of the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation, who made the first selection among 625 portfolios received this year. “I wanted to select 12 very different approaches, those that seemed to me to show a high level of mastery. Very few in black and white, not even in 24 × 36, the traditional format of photojournalism: this genre is going through a renewal … It seems that the portfolios show the various possible approaches to photography. It is, indeed, a mirror of our present concerns.”

The executive committee, composed of qualified personalities in the artistic domain and personalities that represent the Group HSBC, have decided on the portfolios of the Mexican photographer Alinka Echeverria, on a subject called On the road to Tepeyac, and the Chinese photographer Xiao Zhang, with his portfolio Coastline.

Born in 1981 in Mexico, Alinka Echeverria holds a Masters degree in Cultural Anthropology obtained at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom. Her work for this prize shows 300 of the 6 million pilgrims that make their way to the Guadalupe Basilica, near Mexico City, bearing on their backs statues of the Virgin to have her blessed.

Also born in 1981, in Yantaï, Shandong, Xiao Zhang lives in Chengdu. He has a degree in Architecture of the University of Yantaï. His work evolves around a China that has haunted him since his early years, a beautiful and suffering China. “These seashores are a dream for many Chinese that leave their houses in the countryside and arrive in masses, hoping to find work and an easier life. These shores are the “windows of China” to the outside world.

The other nominees are listed in alphabetical order:
Madeleine Bernardin-Sabri (lives in Paris) born in 1981.
Cyrus Cornut (lives in Paris) born in 1977
Bernard Demange (lives in Nancy), born in 1959
Khaled Hasan (lives in Dhaka Bangladesh) born in 1981
Martin Hulten (lives in Stockholm) born in 1981
Nicolas Lo Calzo (lives in Paris), born in 1979
Pierre-Olivier Mazoyer (lives in Toulouse) born in 1967
Lola Reboud (lives in Paris) born in 1982
Vanessa Santullo (lives in Marseille) born in 1975
Virginie Terrasse (lives in Paris) born in 1976

Bernard Perrine
Bernard.Perrine1@orange.fr
Correspondent for the Institut of France

contact.prix@hsbc.fr