The Hasselblad award is an international photography award. Since 1980 it has been presented annually, with the exception of the year of Erna Hasselblad’s death, 1983. The Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography is recognized as one of the most important prizes in the world today. The Hasselblad award is granted to “a photographer recognized for major achievements”. This may be an individual who has made a pioneering achievement in photography, who has had a decisive impact on younger generations of photographers, or who has implemented one or more internationally significant photographic projects.

French artist Sophie Calle from Paris has been selected as the 30th winner of the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography. The award will be presented to Sophie Calle on Saturday 30 October 2010 at a ceremony at the Göteborg City Theatre. In conjunction with the award ceremony, an exhibition of works by the award winner opens at the Hasselblad Center, and a book is released. This year, as last three years, a book will be produced as a co-operation between the Hasselblad Foundation and Steidl Verlag. The book contains Sophie Calle’s series True Stories, which captures important events of her life.

The Foundation’s citation regarding the decision to award the 2010 prize to Sophie Calle is as follows: “For more than three decades, Sophie Calle has been questioning and challenging the relationship between text and photography, private and public personae, truth and fiction, in a groundbreaking, utterly original way. Her conceptually oriented work depicts human vulnerability and examines the interrelationship between identity and intimacy as well as the construction of official history. It evokes narrative, affect and emotion in ways that at the same time touch the viewer deeply and makes her reflect on the possibilities as well as limits of photography. Her contribution to the understanding of the medium of photography has inspired younger generations of artists.”

This year’s award committee, which submitted its proposal to the Foundation’s board of directors, consisted of: Claude W. Sui (chair), Curator and Head of the Forum of International Photography of the Reiss-Engelhorn Museums, Mannheim, Germany, Ariella Azoulay, Teaching Contemporary Philosophy and Visual Culture, Hermeneutics and Cultural Studies Program, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel, Vladimir Birgus, Curator, Historian of Photography, Professor and Head of the Institute of Creative Photography of the Silesian University in Opava, Prague, Czech Republic, Sergio Mah, Professor at University Nova of Lisbon, Portugal and the current Artistic Director of Photoespaña, Mette Sandbye, Associate Professor at Copenhagen University (Department of Art and Cultural Studies), Art Critic at Weekendavisen, Denmark

Sophie Calle (born 1953) is a French writer, photographer, installation artist, and conceptual artist. Calle's work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, and evokes the French literary movement of the 1960s known as Oulipo. Her work frequently depicts human vulnerability, and examines identity and intimacy. She is recognized for her detective-like ability to follow strangers and investigate their private lives. Her photographic work often includes panels of text of her own writing.

Since 2005 Sophie Calle taught as a professor of film and photography at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland[1]. She has lectured at the University of California, San Diego in the Visual Arts Department. Exhibitions featuring the work of Sophie Calle took place at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, at Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme, Paris, at Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, USA, at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium; Videobrasil, SESC Pompeia, São Paulo, Brazil; Museum of Modern Art of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil; Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, UK; and the De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, Tilburg, The Netherlands.