British photographer, member of Agence VU' since 1996, represented by the galleries Le Réverbère (Lyon) and LT2, lives and works mainly in Brussels (Belgium).
Graduated of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle (ENSCI) in Paris, Rip Hopkins begins his photographic career in collaboration with Médecins Sans Frontières, for whom he realizes photographic reports and documentaries about endangered populations around the world for almost 10 years. At the same time, he carries out more personal documentary projects, notably on Gypsies in Europe, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, for which he receives numerous distinctions (Ilford Prize, Kodak Prize for young photoreporter, HSBC Prize, Fiacre Grant, Scam Prize, etc.).
In constant search for challenges, Rip Hopkins is looking for new spaces of expression closer to him, first in France and then in Belgium. With ordinary and a priori banal subjects as a starting point, he explores with humour and poetry the possibilities and surprises of photography: he questions the limits of social representations, plays with staging and sometimes even immerse himself into them to plunge in the reality of others and reduce the distance between the photographer and his models.
Renewing the form of visual investigations of reality, his atypical style is at the point where documentary photography meets artistic expression, and is distinguished by a great sensitivity to colours, materials, and everything that makes up a "decor" that he invests in such a way as to place the human being - model and spectator - at the heart of his work. He thus shows galleries of mischievous and playful portraits either of the descendants of the beheaded of the French Revolution (« La Révolution en héritage »), or of the Mansonnians and their particular link to the horse (« Chevaleresque »), of the British settled in the Périgord (« Another Country »), of the contemporary Belgian aristocracy (« Belgian Blue Blood »), of the Canadian identity (« Canada Canada », at the invitation of the French Embassy and on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Canada)…
Author of 11 monographs, Rip Hopkins is regularly exhibited. His works are part of prestigious public and private collections such as those of the Guerlain Foundation (France), the HSBC Foundation (France), LaSalle Bank (USA), the Musée de lʼElysée (Lausanne), the Musée d'Orsay (Paris), the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Centre National d'audiovisuel (Luxembourg), the Fonds régional dʼart contemporain dʼIle de France and the Fonds national dʼart contemporain (France).
Pour le 150ème anniversaire du Canada, Rip Hopkins a réalisé 150 portraits de canadiens.
En se mettant en scène, en s'habillant comme eux, le photographe s'’immerge dans la réalité des autres. A sa manière, malicieuse et ludique, Rip Hopkins interroge l'identité. Propriétaire d’une camionnette aux couleurs démodées du flower power traitée comme une compagne, motards, policiers, reporters, Justin Trudeau, jeunes, vieux et tant d’autres, personne n’y échappe. Rip Hopkins rit d’un sujet, mais pas à ses dépens.
Belgian Blue Blood (coming from the series) (2016)
Through 96 portraits, Rip Hopkins delivers a surprising picture of Belgium contemporary aristocracy. Dukes, Countesses, princes and baronesses pose in front of his camera and present us with the list of their titles and ancestors. 99 families from various backgrounds are pictured here.
Arond25,000 people are part of Belgium nobility, which means about 0.2 % of the country population. Each year, 20 new names are added to the list, ennobled by the king. Hence, if at the time of the Ancien Régime, approximately 400 families claimed to be part of the country's nobility, nowadays about 1,300 ones can do so.
In Belgium, the country of aristocracy, nobility is strictly defined by the...
During the « Studio Fnac » operation, Rip Hopkins met and photographed several families who entered into the spirit of the game by letting themselves be staged.
The results are both touching and subtle with the families posing and interacting with the background on which the photographer’s images were being projected.
Through this series of portraits, Rip Hopkins reveals how the inhabitants of Maisons-Laffitte, a French city historically linked to horses, perceive and take on the imagery of the horse in their fantasy.
At the North West of Paris, close to the forest of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, stands a city that has been haunted by the presence of horse since the end of the 18th century. Its racetrack has the longest straight line of Europe. Men and horses live together. Tracks are available to ride around. The mounted horse always has the priority. An anachronistic castle reminds us of the times before industrialization, when horse was the closest ally of man. Its legendary monumental stables have now...
For its 40th anniversary, MSF (Doctors Without Borders) gave Rip Hopkins a carte blanche.
He invites about sixty personalities from the world of art and culture, sciences and medicine, sport or press…and MSF voluntaries to wear the MSF’s tee-shirt in order to express their commitment in accordance with their personality, desire or message.
The result? Pictures that break with conventional iconography of humanitarian photography; pictures which invite us to think with humour about the many aspects of commitment.
“Quatre-vingt treize (ninety three) is a strange thing.
In French, three words to name a number.
Unlike the other French départements generally known by their names, this one is known by its administrative number.
Quatre-vingt treize is difficult to write and spell. Especially for a stranger like me.
And yet, it’s a département where a lot of people from foreign countries live.
Writing it with numbers is a way to simplify…but it condemns it too.
The ninety three became the 9-3…with a hotchpotch of negative connotations from the riots to the no-go areas.
For my first meeting at the MC93, I asked for the route to Seine-Saint-Denis. A man answered me: “I don’t know, but here is the 9-3”...
It's a gloomy world with a leaden horizon
Where through the night swim horror and blasphemy.
“De profundis Clamavi”, Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)
With the idea that the world could disappear in 2012, Rip Hopkins made pictures of the behaviours we could adopt if civilization tends to vanish and if we have to reinvent everything, like prehistoric men did.
Rip Hopkins’ 68 portraits provide a record that is both personal and objective, showing the real and imaginary world of British expats in France.
The photographs reveal aspects of British identity which is embedded within a culture of imagination and relates intimately to all the arts. In the past this has only been suggested, but rarely seen.
Domestic violence has a particularity in that it does not exist as such until it has been exposed in the public sphere: at the police station, to some close relatives, or when its consequences leave the private sphere.
Nowadays, this kind of violence, long-time denied by society, is recognized and studied by the World Health Organization.
Following the French Revolution, France was governed by a regime with a minimal toleration for deviation. Sensitive to the smallest threats to this newly installed government, it oftentimes executed individuals innocent of the crimes of which they were accused. It was founded on force and repression, characteristics which would give two periods of French history their name: “The Terror.” Between the summer of 1793 and 1794, the Terror reached its height, permitting the worst atrocities and violence.
In order to save time, witnesses would not be heard and the accused had very little time to defend themselves before the judges. The law of Prairial 22nd, Year II (June 10, 1794) reduced...
Haute couture and acrobatics mix to give this series an aerial aspect.
Rip Hopkins gives models and their outfits, a grace that sublimate them.
His photography can’t be confined to studio works or to fashion world but
become a strong aesthetic proposition.
Rip Hopkins has photographed the advertising campaign of the spring / summer 2008 collection of Marithé & François Girbaud.
In the living room of a town house, a family is having a row...without ripping the clothes of the brand. The opposition realised this way, between an “ancien regime” setting and the latest fashion trends, creates an atmosphere under pressure.
Timisoara is the town from where started the Romanian revolution in december 1989. Twenty years later, it enters, with its country, in the european community. Two groups live together in this town : those from before and those from after the 1989 revolution. Those who were over twenty-five in 1989 had difficulties to adapt to capitalism. The younger live fully this new system. To show the two faces of this society, I have photographed Timisoara’s life machine : industry, commerce, authority, leisure, family. The caption on each photograph indicates the age of the people, some of whom were witnesses of the revolution, witnesses of the truth.
Because the true story is still uncertain. In...
“Rip La France” is a style exercise. Each picture is taken and constructed in a way of a cinematographic work.
Visual angles and lenses are the same used in Sergio Leone’s films.
Each place, in this work, is important for France good running.
I dressed up according to the place and its activity.
People who are in the picture, don’t necessary know that I was dressed up.
And it’s me who made every single picture with the help of a purple distant cable release.
Rip Hopkins propose us a portraits' galerie of the lawyers of mighties. At the duty of the great decision-makers of our world, those law men open their office's doors and accept to be directed in a space where secrets of their profession are.
I've been taking photographs since I was ten years old. Photography from the start was something magical for me, transferring reality onto paper with my own hands. It gradually became a record of time, then a tool for describing my version of reality to others. It was also a key whereby an image could jog my memory bringing back the situation in which I took the photograph. Eventually it became a way of explaining my presence and a means of gaining access.
I'm interested in people and photography is an act that incites curiosity. It facilitates communication and the relationships that ensue. The images that I took were at first solitary, then they became a series, then later a body of...
Usti nad Labem is an industrial town situated in the north of the Czech Republic against the German border. The town suddenly found itself put on the map when the town's local authorities built a three metre high concrete wall around the roma ghetto so as to protect the "honest people" from the "antisocial" ones. According to the town's mayor, the aim was not to separate the two populations but to bring together the "Whites" living in their pavilions on one side of Maticni street and to unite the sixty odd roma families living in the two high rise buildings on the other.
"This "Wall of Shame" is not only a symbol but it is a clear demonstration of czech society's xenophobia. In a country...
All that happens in the haute couture collections of Autumn/Winter 2008 presented this summer.
At the Orangery of Versailles, Dior shows scenes of masters and courtesans from the court of Louis XIV. In the Palais du Tokyo, Christian Lacroix mixes folklore, painting and theatre in a cocktail of Art Nouveau. As for Jean Paul Gaultier, a mixture of the lustre of Indian Courts with the quirks of scottish dress.
With each designer the fashion machine runs smoothly.
It all takes place in four stages. At the begining there is calm and the models are made up. The better known ones arrive late, some accompanied by a mother or an agent while the unknown ones sit quietly; there is an established...
Uzbekistan is a Soviet invention. Before the Russian Revolution of 1917, Uzbeks usually identified themselves ethnically as either nomad or sart (settled), as Turk or Persian, as simply Muslim or by their clan. Later separate nationalities were identified by Soviet scholars as ordered by Stalin. Distinct, carefully crafted traditions were formulated and parceled out to each of these nationalities, mostly to prevent any pan-Islamic or pan-Turkic tendencies.
Soviet authorities openly considered Uzbekistan as being a black hole into which they could conveniently dump entire populations considered as being a potential danger to the Republic. The Slavs and other non-Central Asian groups reached...
In France a photographer has to have written autorisation from the person photographed to publish his image. Without this the photographer can be sued for damages : A man and a woman were photographed together in Parisian street at 10 o’clock in the morning. Following publication the man’s wife discovers that he has a mistress and his employer sees that he wasn’t at work that day. He is fired and his wife files for divorce. He then sues the photographer. If this man had taken the trouble to put a mask on that day he would have had a lot less trouble.
This work is the fruit of the encounter between the Cook Pierre Gagnaire and the chemist Hervé This over the written work of Nicolas Bonnefons, Louis XIV's servant.
With Hervé, we've transcribed thanks to photography the phenomenons and the process of creation of taste.
Then Pierre Gagnaire took each picture to create a meal which I have photographed on the Zuber's fabrics from Nicolas Bonnefons time.
We've played with nature, sciences, history to praise cookery.
“Before I went to Canada, I felt that I was intimately familiar with this part of the world through the pursuit races, the butt stories and the tricks of North American cinema.” Canada Canada is a cinematic fantasy. Canada my own film where I am its main protagonist.
In this documentary series I have constructed the photographs as North American film excerpts in the style of those of Martin Scorcese, the Cohen brothers or Brian de Palma. Each image has its own scenario and each plays its own role in its own reality. A story that encourages us to imagine what happened before and after the shooting.
Canada is a land of welcome and reinvention. We are what we want without being held accountable. By immersing myself in the reality of my models I play with the potential life that could have in Canada, as if I were really the person I embody in the image. Sometimes my real life catches up with me. Seeing the photograph where I tenderly hold the hands of a beautiful woman in our VW combi, my wife worried, immediately telephoned me to find out if we were still together.
Rip Hopkins Text by: Pépita Car Publisher: Filigranes Editions (2017) 300 pages Size: 17 x 20 cm
Belgian Blue Blood
British photographer Rip Hopkins presents us here with a surprising range of 96 portraits he made in Belgium, the country of aristocracy.
Belgian historian Olivier de Trazegnies explores the paradoxes of Belgian aristocracy, while French Author Pauline de la Boulaye, like a botanist pinning a butterfly, examines closely these representations of nobility .
For each family portrayed, its history, titles and motto are explained. Text by: Olivier de Trazegnies et Pauline de La Boulaye Publisher: Filigranes Editions (2016) 240 pages Size: 25 x 34 cm
Chevaleresque
A travers cette série de portraits, Rip Hopkins révèle la façon dont les habitants de Maisons-Laffitte, ville historiquement liée au cheval, perçoivent et s'approprient le cheval dans leur imaginaire.
Au nord-ouest de Paris, en bordure de la forêt de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, se trouve une cité hantée par la présence du cheval depuis la fin du XVIIIe siècle. Son hippodrome possède la plus longue ligne droite d'Europe.
Les hommes et les chevaux y cohabitent. Des pistes sont prévues pour se déplacer à cheval. L'animal monté a toujours la priorité. Un anachronique château rappelle des temps antérieurs à la modernité industrielle, lorsque le cheval était le plus proche allié de l'homme. Ses légendaires écuries monumentales ont aujourd'hui disparu. Aussi le château de Maisons - c'est ainsi qu'il se nomme - passe chaque année une commande à un photographe pour représenter le cheval dans ses murs. Une présence de papier en lieu et place du vivant, en quelque sorte. Dans tous les champs de la création contemporaine, le thème du cheval semble avoir été déserté alors qu'il fut un être mythologique par excellence et source d'innombrables histoires fabuleuses.
Sa charge symbolique est puissante. Text by: Pauline de La Boulaye Publisher: Filigranes Éditions - Hors Collection (2012) 72 pages Size: 22 x 22 cm
Un âge de Fer et de Béton
Something happened in Rip Hopkins landed at the Museum of Prehistory at Nemours, the least understood, least accessible, the "oldest"of France. An order came from the mists of time led him to conduct a series of primal scenes in which he has placed its 60 models. What history or prehistory what is it? That of the artistic act. In each photo that's it. And that's why they are both different and all the same.
If Rip Hopkins asked Chris to write give next to his images, it is less to comment on or interpret that to extend the artistic act which has produced every time the Museum of Prehistory. Text by: Christophe Donner et Francis Saint-Genez Publisher: Filigranes Éditions (2011) 144 pages Size: 31 x 25 cm ISBN :2350462161
Sept fois à terre, huit fois debout
For its 40th anniversary, MSF (Doctors Without Borders) gave Rip Hopkins a carte blanche.
He invites about sixty personalities from the world of art and culture, sciences and medicine, sport or press…and MSF voluntaries to wear the MSF’s tee-shirt in order to express their commitment in accordance with their personality, desire or message.
The result? Pictures that break with conventional iconography of humanitarian photography; pictures which invite us to think with humour about the many aspects of commitment. Text by: Jean Lacouture et Rony Brauman Publisher: Le Chêne (2011) 128 pages Size: 287 x 200 mm ISBN :2812305088
Another Country
Another Country is the first book of photographs devoted to the British in France.
Rip Hopkins' 68 portraits provide a record that is both personal and objective, showing the real and imaginary world of British expats in France.
Having himself abandoned the UK, Rip Hopkins re-exa- mines his roots and his passionate relationship with France. Antony Mair, a British settler in the Dordogne considers what it means for him and others to be expatriates, while Pauline de La Boulaye, a French national sets out her view of the British, the photographer and the present time.
These different accounts raise questions of identity and of belonging, in the context of a society adapting to globalisation. Distur- bing and surreal, Rip Hopkins' photographs resonate at the deepest levels of our consciousness. Text by: Antony Mair, Pauline de La Boulaye et Rip Hopkins Publisher: Filigranes Editions (2010) 128 pages Size: 23x31 cm ISBN :2350461912
Alchimistes aux fourneaux
Les auteurs discutent de la modernité des Délices de la campagne de Nicolas de Bonnefons, considéré comme un ouvrage de référence par les grands chefs. Tandis qu'Hervé This explique les phénomène physiques et chimiques qui s'opèrent lors de toute préparation culinaire, Pierre Gagnaire explore ce que le valet de chambre de Louis XIV avait découvert au XVIIe siècle.
Text by: Pierre Gagnaire, Hervé This Publisher: Flammarion (2007) 206 pages Size: 24x31 cm ISBN :2082015343
Clee Hill and other sculptures
Objet d'édition rare, limité à 65 exemplaires numérotés, Clee Hill and other sculptures fait suite à l'exposition en plein air de 9 sculptures monumentales du célèbre sculpteur Stephen Cox dans le Shropshire en Grande-Bretagne. Text by: Bill Hopkins, Stephen Cox Publisher: Bill Hopkins (2006) 50 pages Size: 74x52,5 cm
Déplacés
Déplacés sont les peuples qui vivent en Ouzbékistan et que Rip Hopkins, photographe de l'Agence Vu, a souhaité montrer ici. Invention soviétique, l'Ouzbékistan rassemble des communautés aux racines et parcours mêlés : Allemands, Polonais, Grecs, Russes, Coréens, Tatars, parmi d'autres, déportés pour beaucoup par le régime stalinien. Par le truchement de portraits et de mises en situation, 99 photographies reconstituent l'itinéraire de ces " non-Ouzbeks ", qui émigrent aujourd'hui vers leur pays d'origine. Text by: Mathias Gavarry, Gabriel Bauret Publisher: Textuel (2004) 99 pages ISBN :2845971281
Tadjikistan Tissages
Rip Hopkins a passé plusieurs mois au Tadjikistan où il a parcouru treize mille kilomètres à pied. À cheval ou en camion. Trop souvent on ne connaît de cet Etat que sa production d'héroïne et la guerre civile qui y fait rage depuis l'indépendance, il y a dix ans. C'est à n'en pas douter la plus petite et la plus pauvre des républiques d'Asie centrale. La difficulté d'accès, l'insécurité, d'incessants conflits interethniques y rendent tout déplacement délicat. Publisher: Actes Sud (2002) 91 pages ISBN :2742739777
Nimulé
Ce travail de reportage en panoramique noir et blanc nous transporte dans ce pays dont on ne parle pas souvent. A l’opposé de toute dérive documentaire, la vision de Rip Hopkins se tourne avec une grande humanité vers une population qui, malgré tout, continue à vivre. Text by: Christian Caujolle Publisher: Filigranes (1997) Size: 18x13,5 cm ISBN :2-910682-39-0
Awards
2007 - Ladurée Award, Paris
2004 - FIACRE Grant
2003 - SCAM Award
2002 - HSBC Award, Paris
2001 - Foundation CCF Award for the photography
2000 - The Foundation Hachette Grant, Paris
1998 - Kodak Award of young photo-reporter
1998 - World Press Masterclass Award, Rotterdam
1997 - Mosaïque Grant, Luxembourg
1997 - “Monographies” Award, Paris
1997 - The Observer Hodge Award
1996 - Ilford Award
1994 - Ilford Award
Exhibitions
Another Country (Corbeil-Essonnes) From 2019-04-05 to 2019-05-19
As part of the photography festival L’Oeil Urbain, Rip Hopkins shows a part of his series Another Country.
With Another Country, Rip Hopkins displays, through 31 family portraits, a personal and documentary work on reality and fantasy of British expats in France.
Being an expat from the United Kingdom, Rip Hopkins confronts himself to his own origins and to his profound relationship with France.
An account that brings the question of identity and of allusion to one country – real or imaginary - up, within the context of a globalized society.
Disturbing and oneiric, Rip Hopkins’...
Canada Canada (Ottawa) From 2017-04-28 to 2017-06-11
Over the course of a year, Hopkins made multiple visits to Canada, connecting with and photographing a variety of people, groups and activities in the Ottawa-Gatineau area.
This archive of work can be viewed as a photographic trajectory of Hopkins’ travels and the relationships he formed in an array of public sectors; from his participation in a yoga session on Parliament Hill, to restocking the shelves at a T & T Supermarket, and riding a horse with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Inspired by the documentary aesthetics of Walker Evans and Robert Frank, Hopkins has captured scenes of...
Un hôtel particulier de 700 mètres carrés est entièrement recouvert de tirages géants. Il s’agit d’agrandissements des objets intimes des personnes photographiées. Ces images entrent en résonance avec l’architecture du lieu et invitent le visiteur à ouvrir son regard sur l’aristocratie belge contemporaine.
L’exposition Belgian Blue Blood propose une galerie de 96 portraits photographiques réalisées en 2015 par le photographe Rip Hopkins. Loin de l’image d’Epinal poussiéreuse d’une classe sociale conservatrice et refermée sur elle-même, on y découvre des hommes et des femmes en prise avec...
Horsey Horsey (Maisons-Laffitte) From 2012-07-04 to 2012-10-26
Through this series of portraits, Rip Hopkins reveals how the inhabitants of Maisons-Laffitte, a French city historically linked to horses, perceive and take on the imagery of the horse in their fantasy.\r\rAt the North West of Paris, close to the forest of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, stands a city that has been haunted by the presence of horse since the end of the 18th century. Its racetrack has the longest straight line of Europe. Men and horses live together. Tracks are available to ride around. The mounted horse always has the priority. An anachronistic castle reminds us of the times before...
Rip Hopkins’ 68 portraits provide a record that is both personal and objective, showing the real and imaginary world of British expats in France.\r\rThe photographs reveal aspects of British identity which is embedded within a culture of imagination and relates intimately to all the arts. In the past this has only been suggested, but rarely seen.
The 15th Edition of The Noorderlicht International Photofestival is the first show ever to present a comprehensive narrative of photography from the former East bloc. The exhibition shows many photographers who are now forgotten but in their time succeeded in finding their space to work independent of the utopian regime. Rip Hopkins shows his serie named "Riga's Circus". That's the name of a circus built in 1888 and unchanged since. During the Soviet Period, the circus was an emblematic symbol of a socialist brave new world.
2007 Ladurée prize, Paris 2003 SCAM prize (mention spéciale), Paris 2002 FIACRE scholarship, Paris 2002 HSBC Award, Paris 2000 Hachette Award, Paris 1998 World Press Masterclass, Rotterdam 1997 Kodak Award for young photoreporter, Perpignan 1997 Observer Hodge Award, London 1996 Ilford of the Black & White jury award, Paris
Expositions
2008 Photo Levallois, Hôtel de Ville 2008 Cité de l'Architecture 2008 Biennale de la photographie, Liège 2008 Musée d'Aquitaine, Bordeaux (collective) 2008 Cité de la Villette, Paris 2007 Musée d'Orsay, Paris 2007 Galerie Le Réverbère, Lyon 2007 Galerie Fraich'attitude, Paris 2007 Centre Nationale de l'Audiovisuel, Luxembourg (collective) 2007 Rencontres d'Arles (collective) 2006 Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris 2006 Artcurial, Paris (collective) 2006 Galerie du cinéma MK2 Bibliothéque, Paris (collective) 2006 Parc de Seaux, Paris (collective) 2006 Galerie du Carré Amelot, La Rochelle
Parutions
Outdoor Outlaws, Io Donna
Des idée pour sauver le PS, Le Monde 2
Alchimistes aux fourneaux, Libération
Porftolio Alchimistes aux fourneaux, Le Monde 2
Paris anonyme, Libération
Portraits avocats des Puissants, Le Monde 2
Première ville Santé en France, Télégraph Magazine
Portfolio Alchimistes aux fourneaux, Epsilon
Bibliographie
2007 Alchimistes aux fourneaux, Flammarion, France 2007 Fabrique De l'Europe, Editions Filigranes, France (group publication) 2006 Clee hill & other sculptures, Stoner Press, GB 2006 Photographies contemporaines – points de vue, Editions Textuel, France 2006 Décade, Éditions Filigranes, France 2006 Vu à Orsay, Musée d'Orsay / Panini, France (group publication) 2006 Agence VU, Photo Poche / Actes Sud, France (group publication) 2006 VU à Paris, Panini Books, France (group publication) 2004 Déplacés, Editions Textuel, France
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