The Bourse du Talent has supported and validated numerous careers. Many winners went on to receive other prestigious awards, such as the HSBC Photography Prize and the Picto Fashion Photography Award, among others. These are important landmarks, and the primary motivation of the organizers of the Bourse du Talent is precisely to pass the baton and propel emerging talents toward new artistic, cultural, and professional horizons.
When the Louis Rœderer Foundation suggested a collaboration with the Bourse du Talent just over a year ago, the award coordinators were gratified by the importance of their mission as “guides” within the program.
The spirit of the Bourse and its talents were going to meet the spirit of Louis Rœderer’s champagne. Ten former award winners were invited to a residency to capture Louis Rœderer’s unique energy and influence. Intended first of all for publication in an issue of L’Officiel of Louis Roederer entirely devoted to photography, the works of the ten photographers (and artist pairs) enjoyed carte blanche to reveal, each in their own distinct way, the realm of Roederer. The artist’s projects have for the most part eluded any conventional vision of the subject. Instead, each photographer has absorbed the place and its identity in order to interweave their own stories and their personal paths.
This is true for instance of Laurent Kronetal who chose to approach Rœderer from a future-oriented perspective, in conjunction with an examination of our relationship to time, which is at the heart of his current project. The encounter between the Bourse du Talent and Louis Rœderer is also an opportunity to see a diversity of approaches and techniques, such as the work of Thomas Devaux, whose images are constructed from other photographs and who has sought to embody the Rœderer spirit in a single person. Others, like Laura Bonnefous, have deployed a more poetical aesthetics, foregrounding objects and traces imbued with the essence of Maison Rœderer: “A man–morning dew, a woman–vine shoot, still lifes: a group, winegrowers’ boots, a grape harvest bucket, harvesting gloves, etc. I turned them into something situated between museum piece and portrait gallery…,” writes Laura Bonnefous.
These stimulating encounters are a fusion of humor, complicity, sharing, and passion for excellence. Michel Janneau, President of the Louis Rœderer Foundation, described the foundation’s patronage as a “superb way to embellish coincidences.” This is precisely what is happening in this special issue of L’Officiel, which brings to light as much the atmosphere and the unique identity of Maison Rœderer as it does the genius, the audacity, and the engagement of the Bourse du Talent artists.
www.louis-roederer.com/fr/foundation
