LAFITE - DBR

Jacques Henri LARTIGUE

Born in Courbevoie in 1894, Jacques Henri Lartigue became a photographer at a very young age. Before going on to become one of the most famous photographers of the 20th century following his first personal showing at the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1963, J.H. Lartigue was a renowned painter between the world wars. Jacques Henri Lartigue passed away on the same year that he made this magnificent photo of Château Lafite Rothschild and its grapevines in 1985. Daniel Vignat only needed to place one single phone call to J.H. Lartigue, who at 91 years old was still very enthusiastic, taking his camera on across one shoulder, his only worry being to make sure that there were good wines to sip !

Jean LARIVIÈRE

In the 1980s, Jean Larivière was already famous for his advertising graphics - excellent artwork - for Louis Vuitton. He is the favorite of specialised agencies such as "Egoïst", he does what they call "magnificent elegance". A young and skilled individual born in 1940, he adds a new tone allowing to alternate between generations in photography, keeping up with the hopes of Baron Eric and Daniel Vignat. His photo on the terrace of the château symbolizes the sustaining of the property beyond individual generations (the painting at the foot of the tree is a portrait of Baroness Charlotte, daughter of Baron James de Rothschild, by Harry Sheffer).

Irving PENN

Irving Penn was born in 1917, and photographed the century's leading personalities: artists, dancers, filmmakers, musicians, architects, and writers. In 1950, he made the first of his 27 seasons in Fashion Design, and in 1964 restored the platinum-palladium technique, a development with velvety tones, which had been abandoned since 1900. With an intensely straightforward vision, Penn methodically created fashion designs, still life, nudes and ethnographic subjects (indigenous from Peru, Nepal etc.) The New York Museum of Modern Art hosted an Irving Penn retrospective in 1984. This photo was initially a sketch on a wrinkled page of a dairy, and sent by mail. After the surprise suggestion, total liberty was given to the artist.

Keiichi TAHARA

Born in Kyoto in 1951, Keiichi Tahara moved to Paris in 1973. After making two short films in Japan, he opted for a photographic approach based on chiaroscuro techniques and textural and material effects. Considered as one of the best architectural photographers, he has produced visionary creations for various countries and renowned museums. He received the Nicéphore Niepce in 1988, and the Grand Prix of the Paris municipality in 1995. He was the obvious choice for photographing the newly constructed chai.

Michel GUILLARD

Michel Guillard is best known as the cofounder, along with Jean Paul Kaufmann, of the monthly review L'Amateur de Bordeaux. This magazine is the official review of Bordeaux wines, and is distinguished by the quality of its photography, its layout, and its writing, which owe much to Michel Guillard. He has been a recurrent guest at Lafite, and made several photographic reports. This photograph is a brilliant example of his artistic vision: men, a vineyard, a chai, and a heritage.

Tessa TRAEGER

A renowned British photographer, Tessa Traeger photographs, then edits, and then fundamentally alters her vision. Her work was widely published by Vogue in the United Kingdom, which is very interested in her kind of vision. She pursues her work today with creative methods. For this photograph, she first photographed the château and its environment by sequences and then made giant prints of them. Then she went and gathered flowers, fruit and leaves from the property, and covered the vast prints while respecting the colors of the photos. Then she re-photographed these puzzle pieces and put it all together in the computer!

Jean Baptiste MONDINO

Jean Baptiste Mondino was involved early as a Publicis graphics artist before taking his chance on a Dim campaign, which was a breakthrough for him. He is particularly keen on photographing rock groups - he is very much into music. Then there are stars like Sting, Madonna, Vanessa Paradis, etc. who call on him to make their videos. He is also very appreciated by the leaders of the fashion world (Jean-Paul Gautier, Yves Saint-Laurent, Christian Dior, etc.) It is the originality and his sense of light that interested Baron Eric and Daniel Vignat. At Château Lafite, his eyes focused on the vision of barrels that leave their marks on walls, which made him think of stone paintings.

Robert DOISNEAU

Robert Doisneau was born in Gentilly in April 1912. In 1925 he entered the Ecole Estienne in Paris, where he received training as a lithographer. He started his career in drawing letters and making advertising photos. He had a particular interest in portraying workers' living conditions. The photograph made for Château Lafite Rothschild illustrates that very style that made him famous. He died just a year after making this photograph in April 1994. This work is the product of Daniel Vignat's patience, as it took him 2 years just to meet the "master". It only took a few minutes to convince him, though. Their meeting was even more interesting as they evoked their mutual friendship for Jacques Prévert, the poet that Doisneau considered as his brother.

François Marie BANIER

François Marie Banier was born in June 1947. He was sixteen years old when he met Salvador Dali, who was very interested in his drawings. That meeting would be enlightening for him. A writer, painter and photographer, he became Pierre Cardin's favorite photographer, and is called the photographer of the stars. But he has a piercing gaze on other subjects as well. He had total freedom on his work on Lafite and took advantage of it. His photographs were used for 2 greetings cards : 1994 and 2001.

Jorge DAMONTE

Jorge Damonte was born in Argentina in 1943, but spent his youth in Montevideo and Paris, as his family lived in exile in order to escape military dictatorship. Culture and art were his family's passions. He began making photos with an old Polaroid when he was just 10 years old, then worked alongside Jaime Giralt Font, a popular journalist. At 26 years old, he was already an expert photographer. In 1974, he settled down permanently in Paris, and made pictures for the theater. Later, he went on to work for Yves Saint-Laurent. He had his first show in Paris in 1984. Over the last twenty years, he quit making commercial photographs in order to concentrate on the total liberty of his artwork. Baron Eric and Daniel Vignat got hold of him during his panoramic phase…

Andy GOLDSWORTHY

One of the greatest figures in British Land Art, the sculptor Andy Goldsworthy is famous throughout the world due to his work in harmony with nature. His interests include ice, stone, leaves, wood, the sea, creeks and rivers. Nature is of great inspiration to him. For Château Lafite Rothschild, he photographed these "black holes", to him, it evoked the creation of the world…

Franck HORVAT

Frank Horvat was born in Italy in 1928. At 15 years old, he exchanged his stamp collection for a 35mm Reinamat camera. He initially studied drawing at the Accademia di Brera, and then worked in an advertising agency. In 1949, he began making photos for magazines as a freelance photographer. In 1957, he became famous on the Paris fashion scene (Elle, Glamour, Vogue etc.). In 1989, he experimented with digital imaging, a method that was used in his greeting card showing a fox in a plot of hundred-year-old grapevines at Château Lafite Rothschild. This composition with the animal came from a suggestion from Baron Eric, and the artist went about creating the image with great enthusiasm.

Bernard TOUILLON

Bernard Touillon is a great still life photographer. He is much admired by the most famous magazines for his creative obsessions. For this composition, Bernard Touillon's is processed with a particular relief technique, with the help of the photographer Homi. The effect is delightful, like an invitation to sit down and have a glass of wine.

Jean Michel FAUQUET

Born in 1950 in London, Jean Michel Fauquet spent 12 years in Canada, where he taught photography at an University. He settled in Paris and made his first exhibition there. His work looks more like oil paintings than photographs. His way of capturing light and shapes is very distinguished. Both his printing techniques and his use of specialized papers and supports make him something of an alchemist. Drawings, paintings, sculpture, and photography are all techniques that he uses in creating images.

Antonin BORGEAUD

Antonin Borgeaud is the youngest of the photographers contributing to Lafite's great photo library. His dual talent as a poet and photographer did not keep him from working for the newspaper Libération; reporting on South America, Mongolia, and in Southern France. He also made several very fine portraits. Antonin Borgeaud's vision can be seen in this greeting card which looks more like a booklet full of images that he made of Château Lafite Rothschild.

François Marie BANIER

This is the second contribution of François Marie Banier in this collection (his earlier photograph was in 1994). The charm of this photograph is a symbol of the new millenium - love and creation. François Marie Banier is a writer, painter and photographer, famous for many photographs of famous people in the performing arts.

Richard AVEDON

Born in the USA in 1923. Richard Avedon was involved in fashion and in photography from his youth. His father was the owner of a women's apparel store, and his mother collected fashion magazines and was an amateur photographer. In 1942, he did his military service in the photo department of the American merchant marine. In 1945, he presented his portfolio to A. Brodovitch, the artistic director of Harper's Bazaar, who became his mentor. Through that initial contact, he founded a collaboration that lasted 20 years. He went on to work for major agencies (Egoïst, Look, Graphis…), and made many advertising campaigns. He is recognized as one of the greatest photographers of the 1950's, and explored the "emotional geometry" of the face and body.

Janine NIEPCE
Janine Niepce was born in Meudon in 1921, daughter of a Bourguignon winemaker who moved from her countryside to Paris to escape the phylloxera crisis at the beginning of the century. Her distant relative, Nicéphore, was one of the inventors of photography. As soon as she starts her studies in art and archaeology, Janine is passionate with photography and dedicates herself completely to this art after the war. Janine Niepce’s pictures were broadly diffused, contributing to the creation of France’s image in the 60s. It recalls notably 50 years of the evolution of the feminine condition.For Château Lafite, Janine Niepce took several shots among them the one showing the Château’s reflection in the pond. Shown upside down, it gives an UFO appearance to the water lilies that are then located in the sky…

Martine Frank

Martine Frank was born in Anvers (north of France) and studied History of Art in Madrid and in Le Louvre, in Paris. She has started as a photographer in Life magazine. As a member of Magnum Agency since 1983, she has portrayed artists, writers and has also done humanitary reporting. She was also involved for several years with the association “Petits Frères des Pauvres”. Her work was widely exhibited and was also shown in various publications.
This reporting on Château Lafite Rothschild was done on the occasion of an estival trip with her partner.

Esther Sobin

A young photographer born in Provence of English and American parents, she studied in Paris before heading for New York to work in cinema. Since 1999 her photographic work has been exhibited in the southeast of France and in the United States. Esther Sobin takes photographs of “internal” landscapes, those of her childhood, those to which she has always returned. The artist sets out to rediscover the magic of certain instants, those unique moments that allow us to see things in a new light.

Béatrice Caracciolo

An Italian citizen, Beatrice Caracciolo was a student at the universities of New-York and Columbia. A painter and also a photographer in her spare time, Beatrice Caracciolo started showing her work in the nineties. The international art scene welcomed her with warmth, notably for exhibitions she held in Paris and New York. Château Lafite Rothschild is a haven of peace for the artist as illustrated in this photograph of a landscape where the horizon appears to fade away, giving way to a dream-like scene.

Marie-Laure de Decker

Marie-Laure de Decker was born in 1947 in Bone in Algeria. A senior journalist with the Gamma agency, at the age of 23 she was already covering major world events and conflicts. She is an expert on Vietnam, South Africa, Chad and Chile. Her photos are realistic, often poetic. Her portraits and fashion photographs show her eye for fine, rich detail. For the past four years, she has been covering a tribe from southern Chad, the Woodabes.

Paolo Roversi

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

His elegant style, which is both gentle and strong, is influenced by his Italian and Parisian background.

It is colourful and poetic or in well controlled black and white. Roversi likes to mix the past and the present..

Paolo Roversi (rest)

Working with a 20/25 Chamber and a Polaroid Back allows him to take intelligent and changing pictures.

Using the Chamber he can position himself beside the camera and not behind, which helps him to relate better to the famous models he has photographed.

The critic Gabriel Bauret wrote of his sensitive and delicate images 'they have the elegance and courtesy of their creator'.