Robert Delpire Book Prize 2023
Awarded to Dolorès Marat

Born in 1944 to a peasant mother and an unknown father, she was placed in a Catholic institution from the age of 3 to 6, before being returned to her mother. At the age of 15, she began working as a seamstress, before being hired by photographer Claude Froissard to do housework in his store in Sucy-en-Brie (small town near Paris). She then became his apprentice, learning the basics of the profession: developing films, printing and retouching images. She created wedding coverages, identity portraits and sold photographic equipment.

Following her marriage, she moved to Paris, where she developed and pro- duced prints for a street photographer.
In 1969, she joined the black-and-white photographic laboratory of L’Oréal’s Votre Beauté magazine. As a lab operator and printmaker, she worked on com- missions for the magazine from famous photographers, such as Guy Bourdin, Helmut Newton, Jeanloup Sieff and Sarah Moon. From 1985 onwards, when the laboratory’s activity slowed down, she shot product images and portraits for Votre beauté magazine.

In 1983, at the age of 39, she began her personal photographic practice, adopting the Fresson process for her prints.

She left Votre Beauté in 1995 to devote herself to freelance photography, working on commissions for brands, newspapers and magazines.

After discovering New York on the occasion of a commission, she travelled back and forth for seven years; she held two exhibitions there, at the Aperture Gallery in 1996, then at the Witkin Gallery in 1998.

Settled in Provence since 2011, she discovered fine art printing with pigment ink on Japanese paper at the SHL atelier in Arles in 2014.

Dolorès Marat’s work has been exhibited in France and internationally from 1985 to the Rencontres d’Arles 2023, and has been the subject of several books, all out of print. The dedicated «Photo Poche» was published in 2023.

The Robert Delpire Book Prize 2023 was unanimously awarded to her.