Françoise Huguier is a French photographer. A great traveler, Africa as the subject of her first work: Sur les traces de l'Afrique fantôme and Malick Sidibé and contributed to increasing recognition of their work. She founded the first Biennale de la photographie africaine in 1994 in Bamako. She awarded a second Villa Médicis hors les murs laureate residency in 1993 for her book En route pour Behring , a travel journal of a solo trip in Siberia. This work was exhibited in numerous festivals and galleries, and garnered her the 1993 World Press Photo prize ear. In 1998, she exhibited at the Maison européenne de la photographieA l'Extrême , work undertaken over a few years in the SouthAfrican provinceKwaZulu-Natal. In the same vein as this work, Actes Sud published her book Secrètes , in 1999, about the intimate spaces of African women. Her work involving the fashion world began with the runway shows she photographed twice a year, backstage and in workshops. The newspaper Libération started publishing her photographs beginning in 1983. Artistic directors of major magazines like Vogue , The New York Times Magazine, Women's Wear Daily, and Marie Claire hired her for fashion photo editorials. She also created ad campaigns for Thierry Mugler, Lanvin, and Christian Lacroix. Actes Sud also published her book Sublimes, the result of her work in the fashion world in the 1980s and 90s. In 2001, she spent a few years in Saint Petersburg to report on communal apartments. A book of this work, Kommounalki, was published by Actes Sud in 2008. She received funding from the Centre National de la Cinématographie to direct a film related to these photographs, Kommounalka, released in 2008 by Les films d'Ici. In 2004, she returned to Cambodia, where she was had prisoner by the Viêt Minh as a child. The book J'avais huit ans recounting this story was published in 2005 by Actes Sud. This was followed by an exhibition at the Rencontres Photographiques d'Arles. In 2007, Jean-Luc Monterosso, director of the Maison européenne de la photographie, asked her to be one of the curators of the 2008 edition of the Mois de la Photo. In 2008, she was invited by Christian Lacroix, artistic director of the Rencontres Photographiques d'Arles, to an exhibition held in her honor. She was the subject of a major retrospective, Pince-moi, je rêve in 2014 at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie.
