Voted "World's Worst Photographer," a French woman lands a $50,000 contract

The photographer owes this unusual title to Icelandair, which has decided to entrust her with its next advertising campaign.

Blanche Mortemard is the chosen one. Out of 127,000 applicants, she was selected for her incredible ability to take bad photos. Crowned “the world’s worst photographer,” she was chosen by Icelandair to capture Iceland as part of a marketing campaign that is, to say the least, unique.

The goal of the publicity stunt? To prove to the whole world that the beauty of Iceland’s landscapes is so powerful that it remains intact, even through the lens of the clumsiest of photographers.

Goodbye to staged tourist photos—make way for authenticity

Blanche Mortemard will fly out on a ten-day assignment as a freelancer. For this extraordinary project, she’ll receive a fee of $50,000, with all expenses paid. The public will be able to follow her “adventures” day by day throughout the summer, directly on the company’s website and social media channels.

Icelandair’s campaign, beyond simply generating buzz, highlights a harmful aspect of our society: the obsessive pursuit of visual perfection. According to Gísli S. Brynjólfsson, the Icelandic airline’s global marketing director, this project is therefore a direct response to a collective overdose of “artificial perfection” that is flooding the web. Between filters, AI retouching, and excessive staging, the executive is convinced that all these false pretenses ultimately undermine the authenticity of tourism content.