Camille Vivier inscribes her Hyèroglyphs at Villa Noailles

Faithful to the modernist and avant-garde spirit of its creators, Villa Noailles continues today to promote meaningful experimental artistic projects under the leadership of Jean-Pierre Blanc and Magalie Guérin.

This year, Camille Vivier, first winner of the 1997 Photo Prize, was invited by Villa Noailles to address the theme of local youth, their energy, carefree spirit and beauty. The fruit of this commission, her Hyèroglyphs occupy the ground floor and the basement of the villa created by Mallet-Stevens, poetic testimony of a youth of which she is less the librarian than the poetic eye. Born in 1977, the Parisian photographer was barely 20 years old when she was revealed at the XII Festival d’ Hyères. She started her photographic practice at Purple magazine before sealing her practice by studying at the Beaux Arts in Grenoble and then at Saint Martins School.

For her residency at Villa Noailles, she went to meet the region’s young people, becoming a privileged witness to moments of life, at the stadium, at the hairdresser’s, taken on the spot or more thoughtful. As aesthetic as it is eclectic in its practice, Camille Vivier captures what she has most universal: her graceful fugacity, her drive towards the other, her shyness disappearing. Polaroids, digital photography, consumer or professional cameras, small or large formats, from the multitude emerges a mosaic in which the beauty of youth confronts itself with the daily and grandiose setting of the Hiero territory.