The Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris is exhibiting the 2017 winner of the Eurazeo prize, Gilles Coulon, who was selected on the theme of “Re-enchanting the Corporate World”. To capture this idea, the photographer took photos of old wine merchant houses now restored, showing the transformation of these buildings that became, once again, places of life and work.
Does this mean that the corporate world was enchanted and then disenchanted? Did it have the power to affect people with a sort of magic so that they lost control of their will?
To capture this idea, I looked at the corporate world like a space, an entity, both the theatre and the actor in this process. Like a silent character biding his time to get back to where he belongs, to say what was forgotten.
And what if re-enchanting the corporate world was simply just restoring its meaning, its humanity? Awakening the sleeping giants, reanimating the old wine merchant houses. Bringing them to light and seeing these buildings come alive and transform to become once again places of life, of work. Meeting all the quality, organic, and natural challenges to recover meaning, relation, and authenticity. Rediscovering the old varietals and whispering them like a magic formula, an incantation.
Languedoc was, for a long time, the unacknowledged child of French viticulture. It took the persevering work of loving winemakers, poets, alchemists, researchers, crazy youth, and stubborn elders to make these wines excellent and to turn Languedoc into a re-enchanted viticultural region.
Taken in the Béziers region of Languedoc Roussillon in 2015 and 2016, the photographs presented show the first steps of this process. The moment when we open the doors and windows, when we rediscover the spaces and levels. Reexamining the spaces like we reexamine wine, and giving testimony to their transformation, to their rebirth.
Gilles Coulon
Photographer Gilles Coulon, born in 1966, has been a member of the Tendance Floue collective since 1996. He received the first World Press Photo prize in 1997 (Daily Life category) for his work on those migrating between Mali and Mauritania.
Gilles Coulon, Ré-enchanter l’entreprise – Un photographe pour Eurazeo
January 17 through February 25, 2018
Maison européenne de la photographie
5/7 Rue de Fourcy
75004 Paris
France
