Edition 2006

Olivier JOBARD

Born in 1970, lives and works in Paris.
In 1991 the École Louis Lumière suggested to Olivier Jobard that he do his end-of-course internship at SIPA Press, where he could join the agency’s staff of photographers and exercise his passion. His first reports took him to Croatia and Bosnia to cover the fall of the Yugoslavia federation in 1992, then to Haiti for the impeachment of General Cedras in 1994.  In 1996, he went to cover the Liberian civil war. In 1999, he covered the exodus of Kosovars and the KFOR’s introduction in Kosovo. From 1999-2001 he made several trips to Afghanistan, spending time with the troops of Commander Massoud’s Northern Alliance. For his work on Afghan refugees in Pakistan, he was a Care Award finalist at the “Visa pour l’Image” festival in 2000. In the same year, he discovered the Red Cross refugee centre in Sangatte, near Calais: he realised that this was the outcome of all the conflicts he had covered up to that point. He returned there regularly over two years, until it closed. These visits gave rise to an exhibition at Visa pour l’Image in September 2002. From  2000-2003, global current affairs took him to Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire and again to Liberia. He spent two months in Baghdad during the American invasion of Iraq. In April 2004, Olivier Jobard was the only Western photographer to enter Fallujah – the Iraqi town besieged by US forces. In 2004, at Visa pour l’Image, he received the Care International Award for Humanitarian Reporting for his report on the refugees in Darfur, and the Visa d’Or News award for his work on the Sudan conflict. In December 2004, he obtained the Grand Prix Paris Match for Traversée clandestine, his record of his Atlantic Ocean crossing with a group of migrants from Layoune to the Canary Islands. In 2005, he showed Itinéraires Clandestins at the Galerie du Château d’Eau in Toulouse. 1996: Prix du Festival du Scoop d’Angers and a Fujifilm Professional Award for a report on the refugees of Srebrenica. 1997: Prix du Festival du Scoop d’Angers for a piece on an expedition in a traditional boat from Easter Island. 1998: Fujifilm Professional Award for a photo of Mother Teresa’s funeral in Calcutta. 1999: Picture of the Year (POY) Award for a report in Chechnya on Shamil Basayev’s rebels. 2003: an Association 3P awardwinner for his project on clandestine immigration.
  • Institutional partners

    • République Française
    • Région Provence Alpes Côté d'Azur
    • Département des Bouches du Rhône
    • Arles
    • Le Centre des monuments nationaux est heureux de soutenir les Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles en accueillant des expositions dans l’abbaye de Montmajour
  • Main partners

    • Fondation LUMA
    • BMW
    • SNCF
    • Kering
  • Media partners

    • Arte
    • Lci
    • Konbini
    • Le Point
    • Madame Figaro
    • France Culture