Sophie Hatier
France • Born:  1965
Far from the Gardens 
 

“My first career was as a photojournalist. Over time, my approach to photography has changed completely. People now appear less often in my images. I look instead for places where I can create pictures that verge on abstraction, almost like paintings. To do this, I usually choose harsh, sparsely populated landscapes such as Iceland, Norway, or even certain parts of Provence.”

This is how Sophie Hatier describes the tone of her series Far from the Gardens, a project focused on wild nature in its raw state, with no visible human presence.

Hatier has developed a distinctive approach to landscape. She works in quiet, remote environments, and her photographs are regularly shown in galleries. When at home, she divides her time between Grignan (Drôme) and Paris, but has travelled alone to Iceland, Namibia, Norway and across France, particularly in the Camargue and the Drôme, over the past fifteen years.

In her settings, Hatier photographs wide open spaces and reduces them to basic forms. A strip of black rock stands out against the white of a glacier, like a Matisse cut-out. A bright band of blue water runs beneath the dark mass of a mountain. Steam and vapour surround ravines looking as if they have been drawn in white pastel.

Hatier treats sea, sky, land, savannahs, forests, cliffs, and geysers as raw material and does not identify specific locations. Instead, she creates a world of colours, lines, and shapes that moves away from a tourist shot to provide a direct, pared-back view of nature. 

Sophie Hatier is the 2026 winner of the Leica Prize for New Forms of Environmental Photography, supported by  De l’Air magazine. The exhibition is produced in partnership with Leica, which is also providing photographic equipment to the prize-winner. 

Grand Chêne.