People in the business say he has a rare talent, that you don't get into the award-winning photographic agency Agence Vu at the age of 24 for nothing. Rip Hopkins smiles quietly, hinting at the British education that has never left him. "You learn not to show your feelings very early on," he acknowledges. Only Rip does actually have some things he wants to say. And even more unfortunately, he's curious to boot!.
So he compromises, moving between design work (the area he originally trained in), photography, travel, and documentaries (many of them for Doctors without Borders), always remembering "that you can't drink milk and orange juice at the same time". This much should be understood: Rip only does one thing at a time, but he keeps looking in all sorts of directions. This young man has a unique personality, having grown up in the art world (his parents are collectors) and having set off to see the world at the age of 16, his grandfather's camera in his hand, not to "capture" it, but to understand it. The common thread that runs throughout his travels is the question "How do individual people live?" Especially when they live against a backdrop of serious problems, poverty, conflict and murder? Whether we are talking about East Timor, Romania, Sudan, Madagascar or Bolivia, it's the communities that attract his attention and that he photographs.

Whilst he was working on his reportage in Tadzhikistan, it was again the communities (80 minority groups, 56 languages, different religions) that he wanted to explore. It was an original approach: Rip zeroed in on the linking of various ethnic groups through the production of carpets, which is central to the country. As a carpet lover (he collects them), he understands the extent to which each motif can represent a story and help convey identity. He is already planning to spend two months in the country and then come back, let the images "settle" and then return for another two months. "So that I can see what's missing," he explains, pointing out that, "It's difficult to bring back a really well-structured subject on the first go."

Achievements since winning the grant

2001: Winner of the CCF Foundation for Photography prize. Publication by Actes Sud of the reportage for which he was awarded the Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation talent grant.
2002: Rip directed a documentary on the Dallas gypsies in Romania.
2004: He took part in Regards sur 10 nouvelles capitales européennes (Views of 10 New European Capitals) on the Champs-Elysées, and published Déplacés (Editions Textuel), a journey through Uzbekistan, the photographs from which have been featured in many exhibitions under the title Bukhara babe.
In 2005, he published a series of photographs, Bordeaux et le bordelais-manger, boire, penser, in a Swiss-German magazine. He produced Essais, a work on the humanists under the auspices of Montaigne, and exhibited at the château de Roquetaillade. Other exhibitions of his work were held in Mulhouse, Riga and Echirolles.