Views on Château Lafite Rothschild

"We have been calling upon the great talents of photography for many years to cast their gaze upon Château Lafite Rothschild. This artistic collaboration is captivating."

Baron Éric de Rothschild.

Charlotte Dumas

Antti Laitenen

Harry Gruyaert

Patrick Faigenbaum

Evgenia Arbugaeva

Gueorgui Pinkhassov

He ChongYue

Assaf Shoshan

Thibaut Cuisset

Pentti Sammallahti

Sharon Core

Michael Kenna

Elger Esser

Elliott Erwitt

Beatrice Caracciolo

William Klein

Paolo Roversi

Marie-Laure de Decker

Beatrice Caracciolo

Esther Sobin

Martine Franck

Janine Niepce

Richard Avedon

François-Marie Banier

Antonin Borgeaud

Jean-Michel Fauquet

Bernard Touillon

Frank Horvat

Andy Goldsworthy

Jorge Damonte

François-Marie Banier

Robert Doisneau

Jean-Baptiste Mondino

Tessa Traeger

Michel Guillard

Keiichi Tahara

Irving Penn

Jean Larivière

Jacques Henri Lartigue

Fred Jourda

Nicholas Vreeland

Alexandre Bailhache

Alexandre Amic

Pascal Dolemieux

Marc Riboud

Alexandre Bailhache

Richard Kalvar

Horst P. Horst

Willy Ronis
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Views on Château Lafite Rothschild

Charlotte Dumas

Fascinated by the ambivalence of the human-animal relationship, photographer Charlotte Dumas takes an attentive look at the way we use animals and coexist with them.

 

In 2012, she began using the moving image alongside her photography practice. Her first video work, Anima (2012), features the horses of Arlington National Cemetery, USA, as they fall asleep at night in their stables.

 

“The idea that the state of humanity can be read and studied through the way we behave with animals” is the essential thread running through her work.

 

Then in 2015, she started working on the Stay photographic project on Japan’s remaining indigenous horses. Her sensitive eye has carried many projects.

 

At Lafite, she focused her lens on our beloved Landes Marine herd of 30 cows.

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Antti Laitenen

Since his childhood in the Finnish forest, Antti Laitinen has developed a practice combining Land Art and photography. Nature is both his canvas and his palette: Antti uses the raw material of the landscape to create ephemeral installations, which he immortalizes through photography. He refers to his works as “Broken Landscapes”.

 

In Finland, he hunts and gathers wild food from spring to autumn. The rest of the year, it’s dark 24 hours a day and snow covers everything. But that doesn’t stop him from swimming in a 10-degree sea! This life in communion with the elements makes him a profound person, who never shies away from the big questions.

 

At Lafite, his gaze naturally fell on the hundred-year-old willows lining our garden. Depicted in the engraving adorning the label of our great wine, these trees green up every spring, creating caverns of tranquility beneath their curtains of leaves.  

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Harry Gruyaert

At the age of 20, after studying at the Brussels School of Cinema and Photography, Harry Gruyaert decided to leave his native Belgium for Paris.

As a press photographer, he discovered a fascination for colour during a first trip to Morocco, which fuelled his desire to travel the world to better feel it and express it through photographs.

 

“To find the unique, strong image, the one that attracts, Harry Gruyaert turns to a slower, documentary approach.”

 

Later, he became interested in contemporary subjects, such as pop-art and television. In 1972, he captured a series of photos he called ‘TV Shots.’ He draws a portrait of the world with pop accents, and poses, through his photographs, asking real questions about modernity and everyday life. 

A member of the Magnum agency since 1981, Harry Gruyaert spent more than thirty years travelling the world before returning to his native country.

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Patrick Faigenbaum

Trained in painting and drawing from 1968 to 1973, Patrick Faigenbaum is a photographer of timeless subjects. In the history of art, portraits have long been reserved for painters. Patrick Faigenbaum is first and foremost a portraitist. His compositions remain at the heart of a tradition of painting.

 

“The portraitist of the 1980s becomes a chronicler of the urban in the 1990s through ‘portraits of cities,’ as if seized by a reality that he had until then rather avoided.”

 

In 1984, during a stay in Venice, he decided to devote a series of photographs to the holdovers of the past in the palaces built during the Renaissance and in which the descendants of illustrious families of Florence, Rome, and Naples live.

 

Born into a Russian-Polish Jewish family, which he saw shattered by the mortal blows of history, Faigenbaum thus penetrates the almost impervious structure of an aristocracy whose history has not suffered any break for five centuries.

 

The first major exhibition devoted to the career of this major figure of the contemporary photography scene was organised by the Académie de France in Rome, in collaboration with the Vancouver Art Gallery, in January 2014.

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Evgenia Arbugaeva

Evgenia Arbugaeva was born in the town of Tiksi, in the Russian Arctic. In 2009, she graduated from the documentary photography and photojournalism program of the International Center of Photography in New York and has been working as a freelance photographer ever since.

 

“In her personal work, Evgenia Arbugaeva often looks to her homeland, the Arctic, discovering and capturing remote worlds and the people who live in them.”

 

She has won several competitions including the ICP Infinity Award, the Leica Oskar Barnack Award, and the Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund Grant. Her work has been exhibited internationally and has appeared in publications such as National Geographic, Le Monde, and The New Yorker, among others.

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Gueorgui Pinkhassov

Georgi Pinkhassov was born in Moscow in 1952. After studying cinema at the Moscow Film Institute (VGIK), he joined the Moscow Union of Graphic Arts and in 1978 he obtained the status of an independent artist.

 

“His work was noticed by the famous Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, who invited him to report on the making of his film, Stalker, in 1979.”

 

His first book Sightwalk (1988) explores every detail through reflections or particular lights that often tend towards abstraction. Pinkhassov joined Magnum Photos in 1988.

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He ChongYue

He ChongYue is one of the most respected contemporary artists in Chinese photography. Born in Beijing in 1960, he turned to photography in 1984 and works mainly with a handmade large-format camera.

 

In the 2010s, he devoted himself to a sociological study of rural China: the series ‘Family Planning,’ ‘The End’ and ‘The Exempted’ all address the gradual end of rural traditions in China.

 

“‘The Exempted’ series highlighted recent portraits of peasants, all born before 1949 in the Yan’an region. This region was chosen for being the starting point of the ‘Long March’. These peasants represent a way of life that is tending to disappear.”

 

To mark the recent end of the one-child policy, He ChongYue then began his fourth and final sociological series: ‘One Child,’ a project of 400 portraits of young adults who grew up in one-child families. This project, in contrast to the previous ones, focuses on major and secondary urban centres.

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Assaf Shoshan

Assaf Shoshan was born in 1973 in Jerusalem. He lives and works between Paris and Tel Aviv. As a photographer and video artist, he questions a world where borders appear and disappear endlessly, a world where time is felt differently. 

 

“His portraits and landscapes reveal an enigmatic atmosphere, shrouded in mystery and unreality.”

 

‘The Utopia of Movement’ (L’Utopie du Mouvement) is a series of landscape photographs taken over four seasons around Château Lafite Rothschild, at the invitation of Baron Eric de Rothschild.

 

For the first time, his work does not include any trace of human activity, thus opening up a new, more ambiguous temporality, with no indication of time. In the same way, he questions movement rather than expectation. Indeed, nature knows no stagnation, no stability. On the contrary, everything moves at its own speed. 

 

Shoshan was a resident at the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici between 2013 and 2014. His work has been exhibited in several galleries and museums in France and Europe, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Macro (Museum of Contemporary Art) in Rome, and the Fondation Lambert in Avignon.

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Thibaut Cuisset

Thibaut Cuisset was born in 1958 in Maubeuge. He lives and works in Montreuil-sous-Bois. He was a resident at the Villa Medici in 1993 and resident at the Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto, Japan in 1997. He was awarded the prize for photography by the Académie des Beaux Arts/Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière in 2009 and was a laureate of the Fondation des Treilles in 2016.

 

“It was during a trip to Morocco in 1985 that he took his first landscape photographs in colour, with a standing camera. He then understood that the practice of landscape photography could be a way of looking at the world.”

 

Since then, his photographic work has unfolded in successive projects and each time a French country or region is the subject of the series. He has visited a number of countries, including Australia, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Japan, Iceland, Namibia, Russia, Syria… as well as various French regions.

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Pentti Sammallahti

Pentti Sammallahti, a Finnish photographer, was born in 1950 in Helsinki into a family of craftsmen. He is the grandson of the Swedish-born photographer Hildur Larsson. 

 

In 1991, the granting of an art education scholarship allowed him to devote himself to his work and to leave teaching. The 1990s marked a turning point in his career, as Pentti Sammallahti starts travelling and showing his work around the world. In 1996, he organised his first exhibition in France at the Finnish Institute.

 

“His work is both striking and universal. Inviting him to Château Lafite Rothschild was an obvious choice for Baron Eric de Rothschild. At Lafite, the photographer was able to blend light and darkness and to freeze the beauty and spirit of the place.”

 

In addition to his photo reports, Pentti Sammallahti also pays special attention to photography as a “concrete object” and has published more than forty books or portfolios classified as ‘Opus.’

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Sharon Core

A highly regarded artist, Sharon Core is an American photographer born in 1965. For art critics, the question arises of the veil that sometimes separates or subtly links photography and painting. She is said to be inspired by Raphaelle Peale, a 19th century still life painter, but also by Wayne Thiebaud, a contemporary painter associated with the Pop Art movement.

 

“We can simply note that it is her sensitivity, combined with her proficiency in light, that brings out the spark of beauty. Moreover, still life makes us think of life that continues rather than death.”

 

Beyond the technique, this magnificent photograph created for the 2014 greeting card of Château Lafite Rothschild comes from a talent of an artist who successfully immortalises this mythical yet real bunch of grapes. A masterpiece, to be framed…

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Michael Kenna

Irish by origin but born in England, Michael Kenna is a “graphic painter.” He first wanted to be a painter but studied photography to ensure his livelihood by working in advertising.

 

At the age of 22, during an exhibition in London, ‘The Land,’ he was inspired, not to say bewitched by the art of photography. He was then influenced by various European (B. Brandt, E. Atget, P.H. Emerson, J. Sudek) and American masters (H. Callahan, C. Sheeler and A. Stieglitz). 

 

“One would say a traveller who is something of an alchemist. In his vision of nature and the elements, we really find the man who wanted to be a painter. Finally, through his look at trees as well as mythical places, one also thinks of a decorator or an architect.”

 

He develops his artistic talent while working in advertising. Over time, in his travels, he puts a seal of his own on landscapes or cities. 

 

He puts an aura on everything he observes. He highlights the lines and harmony. Behind his style is a man who has left, at Château Lafite Rothschild, the warm and friendly trace of his passage.

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Elger Esser

Born in 1967 to a photographer mother and a writer father, Elger Esser spent his childhood in Rome. He then studied with Bernd Becher at the Kunstacademie in Düsseldorf. 

 

His taste for the drawings of Poussin and Lorrain, plus his knowledge of Italian landscape artists, contributed to make him an artist who photographs as one paints.

 

“Discovering Elger Esser in an exhibition of photographers may give the impression that a nineteenth-century painter has intruded among them. But no, Elger Esser is indeed a photographer, even if his large, realistic landscapes plunge us into a world where Flaubert and Maupassant could tell us about the sweetness of nature.”

 

The delicate intoxication of his images has attracted many museums around the world. Initially, we felt the same. Yet it was another of his specialties that we chose for the Lafite 2012 greeting card. A mastery of deep black and white and shades of grey. A writing of light which is the very stake of the photography.

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Elliott Erwitt

Son of Russian emigrants, Elliott Erwitt was born in 1928 in Paris. While in New York in the 1950s, he became a member of the Magnum photo agency. For over 50 years, his reports and illustrations have appeared in publications around the world. 

 

Even today, he continues to produce images with equal originality and finesse.

 

“Elliott Erwitt belongs, in Janine Niepce’s opinion and ours, to a very rare category of photographers: Those who make people laugh.”

 

For the 2011 greeting card, Elliott Erwitt cast his sensitive eye over Château Lafite Rothschild. A look from a great professional who defines himself as an “amateur,” in the etymological sense of one who loves.

Views on Château Lafite Rothschild

Beatrice Caracciolo

An Italian national, Beatrice Caracciolo studied from 1976 to 1979 in New York, at the New York and Columbia universities.

 

“A painter and at times a photographer, she presents her work to the public in the 1990s. The cultural scene welcomes her warmly, mainly for exhibitions in Paris and New York.”

 

In 2010, after a first photograph for the ‘Regards sur Lafite’ collection in 2006, it is her photograph of the majestic cedar of Château Lafite Rothschild – before the 1999 storm – that illustrates the Domaines’ greeting card.

 

2010 is also a great year for Beatrice Caracciolo, the painter. Indeed, the Academy of France in Rome organised the exhibition ‘Tumulti’ of all of Caracciolo’s work at the Villa Medici, from January 24 to March 14, 2010.

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William Klein

Born in New York in 1928, William Klein discovered the excitement of Paris at the age of twenty. He fell in love with the French capital so much that he never left. 

 

Before becoming a photographer, William Klein was introduced to painting, notably in the studio of André Lhote, where he developed a style of his own.

 

“By turns a painter, photographer, and filmmaker, William Klein is an unclassifiable artist in love with large cities.”

 

Then, with the firm “will to lift the aura of the photography bordered by white”, he went down to street level, photographing with, a wide angle, the chaos of society.

 

In the late 1950s, he directed his first short films – ‘Zazie in the subway’ (1960) – and he would later deploy his talents as a director in many activist documentaries, satirical comedies or advertisements, particularly in relation to the fashion world.

 

He directed, among others, ‘Who are you, Polly Magoo?’ in 1966, a film that made him famous to a wide audience, and ‘Fashion in France’ in 1985 or ‘Aux grands magasins’ in 1964 with Simone Signoret.

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Paolo Roversi

Born in 1947 in Ravenna, Italy, Paolo Roversi is one of the most famous fashion photographers in the world.

 

He likes to mix the past with the present. Working with a 20/25 camera and a Polaroid allows him to take smartly evolving shots.

 

“His Italian and Parisian state of mind at the same time allow him to approach elegance in two different ways, which he makes his style. A strong and soft style – poetically coloured or in well-controlled black and white.”

 

Using the 20/25 allows him to position himself beside the camera rather than behind, which helps him to relate better to the famous models he has photographed.

About his sensitive and delicate images, the critic Gabriel Bauret writes that “they have the elegance and courtesy of the one who makes them.”
Photographs based on an idea by Nicole Wisniak.

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Marie-Laure de Decker

Marie-Laure de Decker was born in 1947 in Algeria. At the age of 23, she became a senior reporter for the Gamma agency, covering major events and wars in the world. Vietnam, South Africa, Chad, Chile have no more secrets for her. 

 

“Her photos are true to life, often enhanced with a poetic touch.”

 

Her portraits or fashion photos illustrate well her rich and fine eye.

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Beatrice Caracciolo

An Italian national, Beatrice Caracciolo studied from 1976 to 1979 in New York, at the New York and Columbia universities.

 

“A painter and at times a photographer, she presents her work to the public in the 1990s. The cultural scene welcomes her warmly, mainly for exhibitions in Paris and New York.”

 

For Caracciolo, the Château Lafite Rothschild is a haven of peace that she translates into this landscape photograph where the horizon seems to flee and give way to dreams.

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Esther Sobin

A young photographer born in Provence to English and American parents, she studied in Paris before moving to New York to work in the film industry. Since 1999, her photographic work has been exhibited in south-eastern France and the United States.

 

“Esther Sobin photographs ‘interior’ landscapes, those of her childhood, those to which she has always returned.”

 

The artist engages in a search for the magic of certain moments, those unique moments that allow one to see things in a new light.

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Martine Franck

Martine Franck studied art history in Madrid and at the Louvre in Paris. She began her career in photography at Life. A member of the Magnum agency since 1983, she shoots portraits of artists and writers, and mainly concentrates on humanitarian reports.

 

“This feature story on Château Lafite Rothschild was made during a summer stay with her partner Henri Cartier-Bresson.”

 

She has collaborated for several years with the association “Petits frères des Pauvres.” Her work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions and publications. 

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Janine Niepce

Janine Niepce is the daughter of a Burgundian winemaker who moved to Paris to escape the phylloxera crisis at the beginning of the century. Her distant relative, Nicéphore, was one of the inventors of photography. From the time she studied art and archaeology, Janine was passionate about photography, therefore, she devoted herself completely to it after the war. 

 

“For Chateau Lafite Rothschild, Janine Niepce took various shots, including the photo of the Château reflected in the pond. Used upside down, it gives a UFO effect to the water lilies that are in the sky…”

 

Janine Niepce’s photographs have been widely distributed, helping to build the image of France from the 1960s onwards. In particular, they retrace 50 years of evolution of the female condition. 

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Richard Avedon

Richard Avedon was exposed to fashion and photography as a child. His father owned a ladies’ shop, his mother collected fashion magazines and took photographs. 

 

“Richard Avedon is interested in the ’emotional geography’ of the face and body.”

 

In 1942, he did his military service in the photo department of the US Merchant Marine. In 1945, he presented his portfolio to A. Brodovitch, art director of Harper’s Bazaar, who became his mentor. Avedon began a 20-year collaboration with the magazine. He went on to work for the major fashion houses (Egoïste, Look, Graphis), produced numerous advertising campaigns, and was seen as one of the most influential photographers of the 1950s. 

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François-Marie Banier

François-Marie Banier was sixteen years old when he first met Salvador Dali who showed much interest in his drawings and would, in turn, become a revelation for him. A writer, painter and photographer, he became Pierre Cardin’s favourite. He is said to be the photographer of the stars, but he captures the anonymous no less.

 

“He was asked to look at Lafite in complete freedom, and he didn’t shy away from it.”

 

This photograph is his second contribution to the ‘Regards sur Lafite’ collection (previous photograph in 1994).His charm has become a symbol of the entry into the new millennium – love and creation.
Photographs based on an idea by Nicole Wisniak.

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Antonin Borgeaud

Antonin Borgeaud was, to date, the youngest of the photographers called upon for this great history of Lafite in images.
He is a photographer as well as a poet, which does not prevent the newspaper Libération from calling on his work – reports in South America, Mongolia or in the South of France…

 

“Antonin Borgeaud’s eye has resulted in a booklet rich in the different facets captured at Château Lafite Rothschild.”

 

He is also the author of some very fine portraits.

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Jean-Michel Fauquet

Born in 1950 in Lourdes, Jean-Michel Fauquet embarked on a twelve-year journey to Canada where he taught photography at a university. However, it was in Paris that he settled and exhibited his work.

 

“His works are more like oil paintings than photographs.”

 

His way of seeing light and form is very personal. His printing processes, as much as his use of particular papers or supports, also make him an alchemist. Drawing, painting, sculpture and photography are all techniques that contribute to the creation of his images.

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Bernard Touillon

Bernard Touillon is a great still life photographer, appreciated by the biggest magazines for his creative “mania.” 

 

“The effect is quite striking, like an invitation to have a drink and a toast.”

 

For this piece, Bernard Touillon’s photograph is treated with a special relief process, carried out with the help of photographer Homi. 

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Frank Horvat

Frank Horvat initially exchanged his stamp collection for a 35mm Retinamat camera. He first studied drawing at the Accademia di Brera (Milan) and then worked in an advertising agency. In 1949, he started to work as a freelance photographer for different magazines. From 1957, he became famous in the world of fashion (Elle, Glamour, Vogue…) in Paris. 

 

“This composition with an animal is the result of a suggestion by Baron Eric de Rothschild to which the artist responded with gusto.”

 

In 1989, he experimented with digital imaging, a method used for this greetings card showing a fox in a plot of 100-year-old vines at Château Lafite Rothschild. 

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Andy Goldsworthy

One of the most brilliant figures of British Land Art, sculptor Andy Goldsworthy, is known around the world for his interventions in harmony with nature.

 

“For Château Lafite Rothschild, he photographs these ‘black holes’ which evoke the creation of the world for him as well…”

 

The materials of nature, ice, stone, leaves, wood, the sea, the river or the stream, are his sources of inspiration.

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Jorge Damonte

Jorge Damonte spent his childhood between Montevideo and Paris, where his family lived in exile after fleeing the military dictatorship. Culture and art were the passion of this family. He started taking pictures with an old Polaroid at the age of 10. He later worked alongside journalist Jaime Giralt Font, and by the age of 26 he became a great professional photographer.

 

“Baron Eric de Rothschild and Daniel Vignat sought him out in his panoramic period...”

 

In 1974, he settled permanently in Paris. He did photography for the theatre, and later worked for Yves Saint Laurent. He exhibited for the first time in Paris in 1984. During the last twenty years he decided he would no longer take photographs for commercial purposes, to leave absolute freedom to his art.

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François-Marie Banier

François-Marie Banier was sixteen years old when he first met Salvador Dali who showed much interest in his drawings and would, in turn, become a revelation for him. A writer, painter and photographer, he became Pierre Cardin’s favourite. He is said to be the photographer of the stars, but he captures the anonymous no less.

 

“He was asked to look at Lafite in complete freedom, and he didn’t shy away from it.”

 

A second photograph by the artist joined the ‘Regards sur Lafite’ collection, for the entry into the new millennium in 2001.
Photographs based on an idea by Nicole Wisniak.

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Robert Doisneau

Robert Doisneau entered the Ecole Estienne in Paris in 1925, where he trained as a lithographer. He started out drawing letters and taking advertising photographs. His interest in photographs that capture the living conditions of workers is remarkable.

 

“The photograph made for Château Lafite Rothschild is a good example of the style for which he is famous.”

 

He died a year after this photograph in April 1994. This work is the fruit of Daniel Vignat’s perseverance. It took two years to meet the “master.” However, a few minutes were enough to convince him. A meeting marked by the evocation of a friendship shared with the poet Jacques Prévert, whom Doisneau considered as a brother.

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Jean-Baptiste Mondino

Jean-Baptiste Mondino started out as a graphic designer at the Publicis agency before seizing his chance on a Dim campaign, where he worked wonders. His hobby is photographing rock bands – he’s a big music fan.

 

“At Château Lafite Rothschild, his eye fell on the barrels and their imprints on the walls, which reminded him of cave paintings.”

 

Then it was the big stars of the music world such as Sting, Madonna, Vanessa Paradis… who called on him for their clips. He is also very appreciated by all the great Haute Couture designers (Jean-Paul Gaultier, Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Dior…).

 

It is his originality and his sense of light that seduced Baron Eric de Rothschild and Daniel Vignat.

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Tessa Traeger

A leading English photographer, Tessa Traeger photographs and then retouches and ultimately profoundly alters her vision.

 

“Her work has been featured by Vogue in the UK, who were very interested in her visions. Her creative work continues today.”

 

For Lafite, she first photographed the Château and its surroundings in sequences and made giant prints. She then went to pick flowers, fruits, and leaves from the property to cover the large prints, respecting the colour scheme. Finally, she photographed the puzzle pieces and put them together digitally.

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Michel Guillard

An iconoclast, Michel Guillard is above all the co-founder, with Jean-Paul Kaufmann, of the monthly magazine L’amateur de Bordeaux. This magazine, which acts as an unofficial review of the Bordeaux wine world, stands out for its quality of photography, layout, and writing, which owe much to Michel Guillard.

 

“This photograph constitutes a brilliant summary of his vision: men, a vineyard, a winery, a story…”

 

He has had the opportunity to stay several times at Lafite to undertake several photographic reports.

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Keiichi Tahara

Keiichi Tahara moved to Paris in 1973. After making short films in Japan, he opted for an approach to photography in which the play of light and shadow as much as the materials and textural effects are privileged.

 

“To photograph the newly built winery, it was a natural fit.”

 

Considered one of the great architectural photographers, he has produced designs for various countries and major museums. He was awarded the Nicéphore Niepce prize in 1988 and the Grand Prix de la Ville de Paris in 1995.

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Irving Penn

Irving Penn photographed the most important figures of the century: Artists, dancers, filmmakers, musicians, architects, and writers
In 1950, he shot the first of his 27 seasons of Haute Couture, and in 1964 he revived platinum-palladium, a printing technique with velvety tones that had been abandoned since 1900.

 

“This photo began as a sketch on a crumpled diary page and sent by post! After the surprise, total freedom was left to the artist.”

 

With a sobriety of extreme refinement, Penn envisages fashion designs, still lifes, nudes, and ethnographic subjects (natives of Peru, Nepal…).
The Museum of Modern Art in New York devoted a retrospective to him in 1984.

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Jean Larivière

In the 1980s, Jean Larivière was already a photographer famous for his advertising visuals – true works of art – for Louis Vuitton. A favourite of elitist magazines such as L’Egoïste, he delivered “magnificent elegance.”

 

“A great young talent – he was born in 1940 – he sets the tone and translates the desired alternation between generations of photographers into the approach initiated by Baron Eric de Rothschild and Daniel Vignat.”

 

His photo on the Château’s terrace symbolises history and permanence across generations; the painting at the foot of the tree is a portrait of Baroness Charlotte, daughter of Baron James de Rothschild, by Harry Sheffer.

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Jacques Henri Lartigue

Jacques Henri Lartigue became a photographer at an early age. Before he became one of the most famous photographers of the 20th century, following his first solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1963, Jacques Henri Lartigue was an admired painter of the inter-war period.

 

“It had only taken a call from Daniel Vignat for Jacques Henri Lartigue, still enthusiastic at 91, to leave with his camera slung over his shoulder after making sure there would be good wine to drink!”

 

Jacques Henri Lartigue died the same year he took this magnificent photo of Château Lafite Rothschild and its vines. It was 1985.

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Fred Jourda

A graduate of the Louis-Lumière school in Paris, Fred Jourda became a colour printer at Picto, a speciality he is passionate about and which he has always practised for the greatest photographers.

 

“He makes his images with an ‘Instamatic’ type camera. No adjustments, no technical prowess, no staging, just his point of view and the obviousness of framing: The essence of the work lies in the contemplation of nature.”

 

Fred Jourda spends most of his time in the darkness of his cabin. To find wide spaces, lights, and horizons, he travels around the world.

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Nicholas Vreeland

A Buddhist monk, Nicholas Vreeland or “Nicky” is also a photographer.

 

“His shots in Lafite express the gentle gaze of a peaceful soul.”

 

He photographed the Dalai Lama in the United States in 1979. During a trip to Dharamsala with a “camera” whose primary purpose was to make portraits of “holy men,” he manifested the desire to become a monk and was ordained in the 1990s.

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Alexandre Bailhache

Alexandre Bailhache was first assistant to François Halard and then to Jacques Dirand. He worked for La maison de Marie-Claire and Vogue and then continued in the United States at House and Garden.

“At present, he is mostly devoted to vegetal shots and from time to time portraits.”

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Alexandre Amic

Alexandre Amic became a photographer in 1990 and left for China. He has done many feature reports on India.

 

“His photos are for him an accumulation of ‘traces of life’.”

 

Both a photographer and a marine carpenter, he draws his portraits as he goes about his work.

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Pascal Dolemieux

In his words, “he seeks to take pictures of reality without disturbing it,” and then he starts to disturb reality with fabricated, staged images…
He says of himself:

“I look at the world through the window of a dark room… sometimes the world is not enough for me… it takes everything to make a world, even to invent others.”

 

In 1981, Pascal Dolemieux received a grant from the National Foundation of Photography, and a few years later, he was presented the Niepce Prize and many other distinctions.

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Marc Riboud

Marc Riboud joined Magnum Photos in 1953. From 1955 to 1957, he travelled to India, and in 1957, he was one of the first Europeans to go to China. He became vice-president of Magnum for Europe in 1959.

 

“His ability to capture the ephemeral moments of life, through powerful compositions, was already apparent in the early days and this ability would serve him well in the decades that followed.”

 

He witnessed the horrors of war and the apparent degradation of cultures that were objects of repression. As a counterpoint, he captured the grace of everyday life in sun-drenched faraway places and the lyricism of children’s games in everyday Paris.

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Alexandre Bailhache

Alexandre Bailhache was first assistant to François Halard and then to Jacques Dirand. He worked for La maison de Marie-Claire and Vogue and then continued in the United States at House and Garden.

 

“At present, he is mostly devoted to vegetal shots and from time to time portraits.”

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Richard Kalvar

After studying English and American literature, Richard Kalvar became assistant to the fashion photographer Jérôme Ducrot in 1965. After a period in New York, he returned to Paris. A member of the VU agency, he founded Viva and joined Magnum, becoming its president.

 

“Richard Kalvar is one of the few photographers that makes you laugh.”

 

He works mainly on everyday urban life and produces an abundant body of work around the world.

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Horst P. Horst

German by birth, he made his career in the United States. A fashion photographer, he was influenced by Greek sculpture, people of the world, and Hoyningen-Huene, who he learnt from.

 

“He came to take photographs at Lafite projecting his vision of a woman from another era: a woman in red in the red lounge with a red rose.”

 

He succeeded the iconic fashion photographer at the Vogue studio and quickly became one of the great exponents of elegance and glamour.

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Willy Ronis

Willy Ronis joined the Rapho agency after the war and worked for ‘Regards,’ Time, and Life. He is a member of the XV group alongside Robert Doisneau.

 

“A man of the 20th arrondissement of Paris and of the 20th century, he loves the working class, and photographs Provence with elegance.”

 

His work is exhibited in museums around the world.

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