Camilo Leon-Quijano, Colombia

Located north of Paris, Sarcelles is one of France’s poorest and most notorious "banlieues" (suburbs). These suburbs usually have a high proportion of migrants and an equally high dropout rate in local schools. At Chantereine High School, however, a very special project has provided disadvantaged girls with a sense of achievement and taught them ambition, self-discipline and perseverance.

These daughters of immigrants have built up their self-confidence thanks to the Rugby team founded by their trainer Florian Clement in 2015. Photographer Camilo Leon-Quijano, born in 1991 in Bogotá, accompanied the rise of these Rugby women with his camera. By now, all of them have successfully finished school. Some of them have even been hired by professional Rugby teams.

Curriculum Vitae: Camilo Leon-Quijano (Freelance Photographer)

Camilo Leon-Quijano is a photographer born in 1991 in Bogotá (COL). Phd Fellow in Sociology he explores the intersections between sociology, aesthetics and photography in an ethnographic fieldwork located in the Parisian suburbs.

He has been awarded with some prizes such as the Grand Prix Paris Match of Student Photoreportage 2018 the Prix du Diaporama Sonore 2017 from Libération, Diapero and Fisheye Magazine, the Robert Lemelson F. Fellowship (American Anthropological Association) and the Rachel Tanur Memorial Prize for Visual Sociology.

He has been finalist at the LUMIX Festival for Young Photojournalism 2018, the Days Japan International Photojournalism Awards and Lugano PhotoDays. In 2017 he was selected for the Nikon-NOOR Academy in Paris.
His work has been featured in several media such as the British Journal of Photography, The Washington Post, Fisheye Magazine, Libération, Paris Match, Le Parisien and Days Japan.