Caty Jan & Mat Jacob
Robert Delpire Book Prize 2026
"For its second edition, the Robert Delpire Book Prize was awarded to a unique, singular and tragic body of work.
A four-handed work in two volumes: the first, never before published, the second, intimate and haunted.
Caty, life, death, the title itself resonates with anguish and tremor."
Sarah Moon, president of the jury
The jury for this edition was made up of eight leading figures from the art world :
Sarah Moon (president of the jury), Quentin Bajac (director of the Jeu de Paume), José Chidlovsky (film director), Michel Christolhomme (president of the association Pour Que l’Esprit Vive), Héloïse Conesa (curator of the contemporary photography collection in the Department of Prints and Photography at the Bibliothèque nationale de France), Emmanuelle Kouchner (director of éditions Delpire), Wajdi Mouawad (director of the Théâtre national de la Colline), Natacha Wolinski (writer and art critic).
The book Caty, life, death is due to be published by éditions Delpire at the end of 2027.
Caty, life, death
The encounter
I met Caty in 1989. We were in our early twenties. We dreamt of ‘living’ photography. She first became a friend, then my partner. Together with three other photographers, we founded the Tendance Floue collective. We had a child. We photographed what seemed essential and right to us. We built our lives with images, around images, in mutual admiration. We loved each other and then went our separate ways. Then time passed and took its course, along with its share of tragic events, failures and pain.
Trip to Eastern Europe, 1991
© Caty Jan, Tendance Floue
The fall
In 2003, at the age of 37, Caty suffered a brain stroke. She lost the ability to speak and found herself trapped in a damaged body. She would never take photographs again. However, she retained her sharp mind, her sensitivity, and her outlook on life.
Caty took her own life in November 2025. It was a thought-out decision, carefully considered. I accompanied her on her final journey, together with our daughter Pauline.
Caty Jan, Paris, 1991
© Mat Jacob, Tendance Floue
The creation
Today, I look back at who she was and who she has become, as if in a long tracking shot punctuated by obscure moments and flashes of life, by moments of brilliance.
Caty had a passion for life. She threw herself body and soul into photography, into observing women and men. She sought there the secrets of our human condition. She would push open a door, delve into people’s minds, instinctively follow a track to the traces of joy and sadness, which she captured in the expression of a body. Her photography, deeply sensitive and poetic, is rooted in reality and seeks to document our fragile souls.
She lived what she photographed, and she photographed what she lived.
On the road, 2003
"Nationale Zero" Tendance Floue collective project
© Caty Jan, Tendance Floue
A book
Ever since she left, with the strength that the departed have to resist absence, the idea of writing a book with four hands, hers, mine, has never left me. A book about the bonds that define us, that bind us, the paths we take, fragility, creation, freedom and the passing of time.
Caty never published a book or held a major exhibition. Caty, life, death will pay tribute to her work and her life, in a book of photographs and texts that will present her in all her uniqueness, without compromise. I will highlight the photographer she was, and the artist she is. The book will explore the major series Caty produced between 1990 and 2003. During this period, she devoted herself to the themes of birth, death, the body, sensuality, beauty, suffering… our time on earth.
Another collection of photographs will present Caty over the years: portraits and candid moments captured without any specific aim, which I took from the time we met until her final breath, spanning 35 years, until the gathering she wished for on a beach in Brittany, where she spent her childhood, for the scattering of her ashes last January.
Texts, fragments of memories and reflections on the act of photography, on her own life, will punctuate the book, providing an insight into a life, Caty’s life.
Mat Jacob
Caty Jan, China, 1993
© Mat Jacob, Tendance Floue
Caty Jan
Born in Brest in 1966.
She co-founded the Tendance Floue collective in 1991.
In the early 1990s, she explored behind the scenes at the Crazy Horse in Paris, revealing a sensual feminine world. Caty Jan then devoted a period of her work to the theme of birth, producing a series shot in several Parisian maternity wards and later in Cuban hospitals. In echo, she explored funeral ceremonies in Ad vitam aeternam.
Inspired by the rock movement and a quest for freedom, she created portraits of the French stars of that era: she shared intimate moments with Étienne Daho, Arno, Lio and Les Rita Mitsouko.
Breaking away from documentary photography, Caty Jan embraced a new aesthetic. This formal distancing from reality continued in her latest work Nationale Zéro, produced with the Tendance Floue collective.
In 2003, an accident forced her to give up photography.
Caty Jan died on the 18th of November 2025.
Mat Jacob
Born in Paris in 1966.
He co-founded the Tendance Floue collective in 1991.
Mat Jacob’s photography captures the human condition, wherever it may be found. This human condition can Be, West, as he puts it in his work on Finistère, the place of connection. The intimate serves to convey the global.
His artistic language and multidisciplinary approach are the result of extensive travel and a visceral need to question the world. His series Chiapas: The Zapatista Uprising in Mexico forms the heart of a sensitive documentary photographic project spanning more than twenty years. Presented as an exhibition in France, Mexico and Colombia, it has been published as a book in the “Photo Poche Histoire” collection by Éditions Actes Sud and earned him an award at the World Press Photo competition.
His work on education around the world across twenty countries, Les Mondes de l’École, in collaboration with Olivier Culmann, has been published as a book by Éditions Marval, as well as featuring in numerous articles in the international press.
In 2021, he was in residence in Chile. His work Valparaíso, exploring the fragility and commodification of our world, was published by Éditions du FIFV.
He was a recipient of the Ministry of Culture’s 2022 Grand Commission for Photojournalism for his investigation with the homeless: Thierry et la Violence du monde (Thierry and the violence of the world).
Since 2018, in collaboration with Monica Santos, he has co-directed Zone i, a cultural space dedicated to imagery and the environment in rural areas, situated in a restored mill on the banks of the River Loir.
Press Contacts:
Catherine et Prune Philippot
Relations Média
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