Greek photographer Daphne Rocou has won the two PHPA prizes for 2013.

The jury of industry professionals that met on Wednesday 4th September at the galerie Esther Woerdehoff chose the same photo as the staff of HPRG, who cast their votes the day before.

An extraordinary story

Daphné Rocou‘s photo tells an extraordinary story:

In 1945, at the end of the Second World War and just before civil war broke out in Greece, a legendary ship, the Mataroa, was chartered by the French Institute in Athens to help some politically-active young intellectuals to escape to study in Paris. After a harrowing journey, these students were housed in hotels on the left bank.

Housing immigrant in hotels is still done today. Whereas they used to come from Greece or South America, they are now more likely to be from Africa or Asia. The HPRG hotels, which have now become places of luxury, may once have been home to immigrant students, possibly students from the Mataroa.

The jury liked Daphne Rocou’s photo because it tells not only her story and the story of her people, but also a chapter of Parisian history, including that of hotels. The photographer pays homage to the welcome France extends to the persecuted.

As well as the story, the jury was moved by the composition of the photo, with its multiples subjects lost in their thoughts. The woman on the terrace looks nostalgically into the distance. Three students hold books, but are not really fascinated by their reading matter. Their attitude shows  their doubts about their future, and how they miss their country, which is represented by the blood-red watermelon in the hands of the young woman in the foreground, with her melancholic look.

The vintage effect makes the photo look like it has been taken from on old album that has miraculously survived the decades, increasing the feeling of nostalgia and emotion.

The staff at HPRG was also touched by the photo, as some of them saw a little of their own life experience in it.

Esther Woerdehoff & Alain Bisotti, 5th September 2013

Extract of an article from La Croix dated 6th August 2013:

«THERE WAS ONLY ONE SOLUTION: LEAVE»

«The entire voyage was organised by the Institut Français in Athènes in December  1945, but it had been planned much earlier by Octave Merlier, who I believe to be of the greatest benefactors in Greece in the last ce,tury». Nelly Andrikopoulou is 91 years old. She was a sculpture student who was on the Mataroa. Born in Constantinople in 1921, she grew up speaking French, as many in the Greek intelligentsia did. «I wanted to do something with my life. There were only one solution: leave.»

Certain student were to become famous – urbanist Georges Candilis, for example, who designed the Mirail neighbourhood of Toulouse, writer André Kédros –  also known as André Massepain – and philosophers Kostas Axelos, Kostas Papaïoannou and Cornelius Castoriadis, the latter of whom called the voyage “an historic event”.

For more infro about the 2013 PHPA exhibition, click here.