Every summer, the small coastal village of Loguivy-de-la-Mer in Brittany is adorned with photography. Founded in 2019 by curator Camille Gajate, BZH Photo is a festival that invites one photographer each year for a month-long residency along the Brittany coastline. Immersed in the local environment and community, the invited artist creates a new body of work, which is then exhibited outdoors on the harbor throughout the summer.
This year, Swiss photographer Ester Vonplon presents a visual poem: a series of altered Polaroids that form an abstract, colorful portrait of the coastline. Her images, hung in the open air, move with the wind and tides, forming a gentle choreography with the natural elements of Brittany.
L’Oeil de la Photographie spoke with Camille Gajate about this seventh edition of the festival, its local roots, and the intimate connection it forges between photography, landscape, and community.
Camille, how did the idea for BZH Photo come about?
I started my career working with photographic archives. I felt a strong urge to share the images we were preserving, which gradually led me to become a cultural project coordinator and exhibition curator. Eventually, I wanted to take photography beyond gallery walls, and bring it outdoors!
Can you introduce the festival?
BZH Photo is an open-air photography festival founded in 2019 in Loguivy-de-la-Mer (Côtes-d’Armor), recognized with the “Littoral en commun”(shared coastline) label by the French Coastal Conservatory. Each year, we invite an artist from another part of the world to explore the natural heritage of the Brittany coast during a creative residency. The goal is to highlight local culture through meaningful exchanges with residents, while also inviting the public to discover the resulting photographic work. The residency culminates in a free, outdoor exhibition on the port of Loguivy-de-la-Mer. Suspended in the wind, the photographs offer visitors a chance to (re)discover the landscape through a renewed, poetic lens.
Which photographers have taken part so far?
Since the festival’s inception, we’ve welcomed six photographers with diverse backgrounds and nationalities: Kodo Chijiiwa from Japan, Mårten Lange from Sweden, Fernanda Tafner from Brazil, Iveta Gabaliņa from Latvia, Daniel Jack Lyons from the U.S., and most recently, Ester Vonplon from Switzerland.
How do you choose the photographers?
Each encounter has been unique. Through my work as a curator and cultural producer, I’m constantly discovering new artists — whether at exhibitions, art fairs, portfolio reviews, or through open calls and spontaneous submissions.
The exhibitions always take place outdoors. Can you tell us more about your curatorial choices? Do you work closely with the artists on this?
The festival is intrinsically linked to the harbor of Loguivy-de-la-Mer. Presenting the work in open air is a deliberate decision — one motivated by the desire to make the work accessible to all, right where it was created. Our display structures, installed along the quays and inside the harbor basin, invite a unique interaction with the elements: the wind, the tides, the passersby who often pause to hold the pictures printed on cloth for a better view. The selection and hanging order of the images are always discussed in close collaboration with the artists, taking into account the natural movement of the works as they pivot, float, and shift like sails with the day. This strengthens the bond between the photographs and the landscape they inhabit.
In May 2023, you celebrated the festival’s fifth anniversary in Paris. What was that experience like?
Yes, it was the first time we gathered all the participating artists in an indoor space — at the Esther Woerdehoff Gallery in Montparnasse. It was a wonderful opportunity to show fine art prints and present a different dimension of the festival, outside of its usual Breton setting.
Is there a publication project that accompanies the festival?
Each year, we produce a small box set of ten photo postcards. It’s a way to keep a tangible, sensitive trace of each edition.
This year, the artist-in-residence was Ester Vonplon. Can you tell us more about her project and how it relates to the territory?
Ester came from the source of the Rhine, high in the Swiss Alps, and explored our relationship with the living world through an experimental photographic approach. Her series Dahinter wartet das Meer — which means “Behind, the sea awaits” in Swiss German — unfolds as a visual symphony in which each altered Polaroid becomes a window into a reimagined shoreline. Land and sea converse in a vibrant abstraction that invites us to see the coast in a new way.
And do you already know who next year’s artist will be?
We have a few ideas… but we’ll let time reveal the answer.
Text and interview by Zoé Isle de Beauchaine
BZH Photo
https://bzhphoto.fr/
