Simultaneously a museum, a cultural center, and a place for research and teaching, the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac was born from the political desire to highlight non-European cultures, in the heart of Paris. The museum gathers a collection of 370 000 objects, a considerable collection of graphic art and a collection composed of more than 710 000 ancient and contemporary photographic pieces. The photography collections covers the whole geographic area represented by the museum, as well as the entire historical field of the medium, from 1842 to today.

Since it was launch in 2008, the program of Residences at the musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac has provided support for contemporary photographic creation. Each year, the museum funds the works of three laureates, selected on the basis of an original project, in coherence with their personal aesthetic path. It also supports the final production of a selection of these works towards their entry into the museum's collection. Focused on a demanding photography practice worldwide exercised, the program is not limited to documentary practice and is open to extended forms of image production.

Since 2008, this support has revealed many talents and open the national collections to the whole world and its current creation. We can mention over the years the works of artists such as Sammy Baloji, Hugo Aveta, Che Onejoon and Lek Kiatsirikajorn (2012), Guy Tillim (2015), Gosette Lubondo, José Luis Cuevas and Luis Carlos Tovar (2017), Fatoumata Diabaté and Emilio de Azevedo (2020) and very recently the collective Ritual Inhabitual (2022). In 16 years, the Photography Award has allowed 41 photographic works, or the equivalent of 695 prints, to integrate the national collections. This major collection constitutes baseline for the international contemporary creation, in such diverse aspects as ecology (137 Years, Zhao Renhui – Singapour), the migratory crisis (Cartographies of Escape, Luis Carlos Tovar – Colombia), the post-colonial memory (Imaginary Trip II, Gosette Lubondo – DRC), the deconstruction of the patriarchal model (La Etapa Bruja, Liza Ambrossio – Mexico) as well as the role of photography in the questioning of contemporary identity (Resident and Visitors, Brook Andrew – Australia).

The works of the 47 laureates of the Photography Residencies of the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac can be consulted on the website www.quaibranly.fr/en

Grant Each laureate will receive a grant of 30 000 € nets in order to complete his project. The amount of the grant covers the general costs related to the project’s execution (travel, accommodation, technical costs), as well as the transfer of rights granted by the author for the selected series intended to enter the museum’s collections. The costs related to the stay of the laureate in Paris for the production of the prints intended to enter the museum’s collections (transportation, perdiem, accommodation) and the production costs of the said prints are covered by the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac.