Grand Prix Picto de la Mode 2024 : Yama Ndiaye

Yama Ndiaye is a 24-year-old Franco-Senegalese photographer. Born in Paris, to a painter father and a visual artist mother, she was immersed at a very young age in a colorful universe in which she was a spectator of creation. Through a childhood in the heart of her parents’ workshop and her dual cultural heritage between Dakar and Toulouse, she felt the need to express her own perspective. Driven by an increased sensitivity to color and light, she developed a strong interest in the creation of photographic images and followed photography training at the Gobelins school, from which she graduated in 2023. She opted for a poetic aesthetic combining staging, field photography, reappropriation of archive images or the exploration of mixed printing and printing techniques. Her work is thus located at the edge of fashion photography and a visual proposition. She devotes herself in particular to long-term personal projects, mainly exploring the themes of diasporic representations, identity, family and even memory. Through the exploration of her dual cultural heritage, Yama Ndiaye creates intimate images linking her different memories and experiences, inviting us through these introspective journeys to read each of the multiple and universal interpretations.

« NATAAL »

NATAAL: Wolof name meaning “Image” and “Origin”

“I am 6 years old, I am in the courtyard of the family house in Senegal, I am lying on the woven carpet on the ground next to my grandmother. Cut off from words, we do not speak the same language, but I read stories in her eyes. Starting from the inability to fully express myself with words, I felt a deep need to explore my cultural and family history through the creation of images. The Nataal project is a series introspective carried out between Senegal and France, within which I create intimate images relating the different observations and sensations felt during my moments spent in Senegal. Memories and imagination intertwine, giving way to images with multiple readings. At the edge of the ordinary and the strange, the images proposed carry within them an element of ambiguity. Hybrid and sensorial, they are the visual transcription of my non-verbal language. My interest in light, my sensitivity increased awareness of colors, clothing and textures take the form of syllables, then words and allow me to create an exchange with the people, places and details that I photograph. Combining staging, still life, reappropriation of archive images and plastic research, this series has the effect of a true introspective and sensory journey, inviting a visual dialogue around memory and identity.”