Hasselblad Award 2024 — Emile Holba

Here you will find behind the scenes snippets, vigenttes and occasional deep dive into my projects and commissions.

Hasselblad Award 2024 awarded to Ingrid Pollard

Within the rich and illustrative chronicles of the United Kingdom’s photographic evolution, Ingrid Pollard’s contribution stands out. From her seminal work, Pastoral Interlude (first published in 1988), which challenged the way English culture portrays Black people in cities, to her major retrospective Carbon Slowly Turning (debuting in 2022), Ingrid’s work as a photographer, media artist, and researcher is finally being recognised on an international stage.

This year, the Hasselblad Foundation announced that Ingrid Pollard is their 2024 Hasselblad Award laureate. To my surprise and delight, I learned that Ingrid requested that my portrait be used to accompany the esteemed award’s press release and media pack.

Huge congratulations, Ingrid, and thank you again for trusting my eye.
The portrait came from a series I made with Ingrid at her house in London. We had a lovely few hours together choosing outfits and poses, with a couple of daring ones thrown in the mix (yes, there’s a drop of around 12 ft behind her on the wall - see the pictures at the end of this post). The initial series from an upstairs bedroom with window light and a single reflector really resonated with me.

If you’d like to read about my time with Ingrid in and around her studio in the wilds of deep, dark Northumberland on the Scottish border, see my Journal post: RA Magazine Ingrid Pollard.

Read the Foundation announcement:

https://www.hasselbladfoundation.org/en/hasselblad-award-winner-2024/

Below features a few more pictures from our day at Ingrid’s London home.

Discover more Journal posts below