What is nature? What is photography? And what links do they have with architecture? Every year, Chaumont-Photo-sur-Loire provides unexpected answers to these questions. Answers that are neither learned nor theoretical, but sensory. Images of nature that reveal their share of secrets about the subjects photographed, the people behind the camera, and the medium itself.
This sixth edition of Chaumont-Photo-sur-Loire brings together six artists whose attraction to nature has turned them into poets and magicians. Whether they’ve chosen to observe it in detail or embrace entire landscapes, they don’t expatiate on it but rather stand back, capturing moments in time to share with us. Lacking any context, the images speak for themselves.
With no landmarks to guide it, the eye comes into its own while the mind is overcome with curiosity. What is it looking at? Seeds that might be jewels, seaweed that might be ivy, architectures that might be landscapes. When the sky merges into the sea and trees are outlined against a white horizon. Poetry is the unbreakable thread that leads the eye from one work to the next, from one artist to another.
Although every edition of Chaumont-Photo-sur-Loire provides us with an opportunity to draw visitors’ attention to nature’s precious yet fragile character, this sixth edition is deliberately more silent and meditative, qualities conducive to arousing wonder rather than awareness, so deeply are we convinced that our society has need of beauty and tranquillity.
In the Château’s Upper Galleries, Éric Poitevin presents a selection of undergrowth, trees and dried plants. This great French artist, who uses photography to revisit art history’s various genres (portrait, landscape, still life and nude), is unequalled in his ability to capture the moment and engage in dialogue with visitors.
In a very different register, the no less renowned Korean photographer Bae Bien-U is once again exhibiting his magnificent landscapes at the Domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire. Known in France for his mysterious forests captured in close-up, he presents the vast expanses of his Orumseries, images of volcanic hills that could almost be paintings.
Still inside the Château, the photographer with triple citizenship (Canadian, Italian and Serb) Ljubodrag Andric fills the Upper Galleries with images of architecture that seems to have been taken over by nature. Completely decontextualised enigmas of matter and light, echoes of times gone by.
th edition of Chaumont-Photo-sur-Loire, we hope to surprise you once again with an outstanding series created by proposée par Loredana Nemes est, elle aussi, captivante. Subjuguée par Rügen, la plus grande des îles allemandes de la mer Baltique, l’artiste d’origine roumaine nous entraîne dans son émerveillement et nous fait découvrir des paysages à couper le souffle. Dans l’Asinerie, ses photographies, composées comme des tableaux, donnent à voir le cycle majestueux des saisons.
Autre voyage exceptionnel que celui auquel invite Nicolas Floc’h. Dans la Cour Agnès Varda, l’artiste français présente Initium Maris, une sélection d’images de luxuriantes forêts sous-marines réalisées en Bretagne. À l’opposé de l’iconographie sous-marine habituelle, ses splendides photographies en noir et blanc initient aux merveilles si peu connues des océans, en même temps qu’elles servent de levier à l’imagination.
Pour clore cette 6e édition de Chaumont-Photo-sur-Loire, nous espérons vous surprendre encore avec une série exceptionnelle réalisée par Thierry Ardouin. Since 2009, the French photographer has been focusing on the world of seeds. The result of extremely delicate preparation and long exposure time, each image is an extraordinary discovery of one of them. Whereby beauty seeds the world.
Chantal Colleu-Dumond
Curator of Chaumont-Photo-sur-Loire