This beautiful box brings together the three books edited by Maison CF, each presenting a selection of artworks from the Florence and Damien Bachelot Collection.

des villes et des hommes


Over the past twenty years, Florence and Damien Bachelot have acquired more than 1000 photographs. Their discerning choices initially focused on works by French humanist photographers such as Brassaï, Doisneau, Cartier-Bresson… before turning toward more contemporary creations, with works by Stéphane Couturier, Thibaut Cuisset, Luc Delahaye, Véronique Ellena, Adrien Boyer, Guillaume Zuili… Their collection rapidly expanded, in order to include images by major figures of American photography—Lewis Hine, Sid Grossman, Robert Frank, Ernst Haas, Bruce Davidson, Nan Goldin, Saul Leiter…—as well as British artists, notably Paul Graham, always with a guiding principle: the acquisition of vintage prints only.

A dual gaze upon humanity in its urban environment. Guided by a shared interest in the real, the urban, its evolution and complexity, a significant part of their collection reflects on the place of human beings within society and the city. These are often images that revolve around metropolises, architecture, walking in the street, and the perception of modern space. This book was published on the occasion of the exhibition "Des villes et des hommes, regard sur la collection Florence et Damien Bachelot", curated by Françoise Docquiert (Associate Director of the Department of Visual Arts and Art Sciences at Université Paris 1 Panthéon, independent curator) and Ricardo Vazquez (Chief Heritage Curator, Director of HDA Var, the art center of the Var Department) in April 2022.
Text by Douglas Kennedy.

Collection Bachelot

This book is the second volume about the amazing Florence and Damien Bachelot Collection, after Des villes et des hommes. Published on the occasion of Sam Stourdzé's exhibition at the Villa Médicis from October 2022 to January 2023, it focuses on the two great transatlantic traditions: so-called humanist French photography and early 20th-century American street photography. The presence of numerous vintage prints by Saul Leiter testifies, with the move to color, to a shift towards the second half of the century and a reversal of photographic influences.

Finally, we explore the beginnings of modern reportage with Gilles Caron, up to the documentary portraits of contemporary photographers such as Laura Henno. A leitmotif of the collection lies in the power of these exceptional images to bear witness to a world in flux, in crisis, and grappling with constant social and moral questioning. However, the Collection does not freeze in this idea and opens above all to encounters with an artist and his work. Thus, we discover the essential place given in the exhibition to Saul Leiter, whose production is above all a magnificent pictorial research rather than a moral plea.

The interview between Michel Poivert, a leading figure in the history of photography and a renowned art critic, Sam Stourdzé, director of the Villa Medici and curator of the exhibition, and Florence and Damien Bachelot, helps us understand the multiplicity of the Collection, as well as its immense artistic and humanist quality.

Portraits

Portraiture is one of the guiding threads of this collection: "The essence of our collection is the human being. This was not a deliberate choice, but rather the result of observing our selections over time. In this spirit, it is only natural that portraiture should be one of the cornerstones of the collection—featuring images of individuals or groups, but also, more broadly, photographs that reflect human situations.", Damien Bachelot

As a faithful or distorted mirror of reality, portraiture reveals the wide range of perspectives photographers bring to their subjects. Through the body, facial features, or gaze, they seek to explore the intricate workings of the human mind. As a genre, portraiture challenges the traditional roles historically assigned to photography—identifying, recognizing, cataloguing, classifying—and sheds light, across time, on the sociological, political, religious, or cultural contexts of our societies.

This publication, with a foreword by Patrick de Carolis, Françoise Docquiert, and Andy Neyrotti, was co-published by Maison CF and the Réattu Museum in Arles, France.