The Musée de l’Elysée and Parmigiani Fleurier would like to congratulate the Colombian photographer, winner of the third edition of the Prix Elysée, for his project entitled My Father’s Garden. The starting point for Luis Carlos Tovar’s work is a photograph, but, paradoxically, one that he has never seen. It is the “proof of life” of his father, taken hostage by the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) in Columbia. Tovar has other traces to fill his father’s silences – the titles of the books he read in the jungle, the turquoise butterflies he kept between the books’ pages, and the Amazon landscapes he tries to recreate in his garden. These enable him to imagine his father’s pain, but never to fully understand it.

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“The starting point for this project is a photograph that reveals my father’s survival during his abduction by the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) in 1980. The photograph, a Polaroid hidden among the small myths of my family history, is (an object) unknown to me. Its existence is a rumor, a depiction from my sister’s memory, the only person who has seen the image, which is jealously guarded by my father among his most hidden and personal files."

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The Musée de l'Elysée and Parmigiani Fleurier are pleased to announce the eight nominees of the third edition of the Prix Elysée:

Alexandra Catière (1978)
born in Minsk, Belarus

Alinka Echeverría (1981)
born in Mexico City, Mexico

Claude Baechtold (1972)
born in Lausanne, Switzerland

Gregory Halpern (1977)
born in Buffalo, New York, USA

Laia Abril (1986)
born in Barcelona, Spain

Luis Carlos Tovar (1979)
born in Bogotá, Colombia

Mathieu Asselin (1973)
born in Aix-en-Provence, France

Nicola Lo Calzo (1979)
born in Torino, Italy

We wish to thank all the photographers for their efforts in completing the application, and the professionals who took time to support them with a thoughtful recommendation.

Discover the nomiees' projects on www.prixelysee.ch

The jury of the Prix Elysée is composed of 7 members: four international experts from the fields of photography and publishing and 3 representatives of the Prix Elysée founding partners.

The voting jury members of the third Prix Elysée (2018-2020) are:

Experts

• Anahita Ghabaian Etehadieh, Founder and Director, Silk Road Gallery, Tehran
• Yasufumi Nakamori is Senior Curator of International Art (photography) at Tate Modern, London
• Agnès b., Fashion designer, Gallerist, Collector, Paris
• Curt Holtz, Editor, Prestel Publishing, Munchen

Founding partners

• Tatyana Franck, Director, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne
• Michel Parmigiani, Founder, Parmigiani Fleurier, Fleurier
• A representative of Famille Sandoz Foundation, Lausanne