Prix HSBC pour la Photographie
Melanie Wenger chooses to tell stories about men and women, everyday heroes, to reveal their identity and their internal selves to the viewer. In 2014 she set out her aims in ‘Marie-Claude, Lady Dolls,’ a photo series that is the product of a meeting between an old woman who never threw anything away and a gifted photographer with a unique sensitivity that is free from prejudice. It’s through these pictures that we meet Marie-Claude. Surrounded by dolls, she is like a child who refused to grow up, she cannot bear to part with them, her last remains of a girlhood of a past time. Fixed in time, they are the objects and rituals that make Marie-Claude who she is. They form the identity and the depth of character that the photographer artfully transcribed into her photographs.