PORTRAIT(S) Photography Festival in Vichy

The 12th edition of Portrait(s) is revealing a brand-new look. While continuing its annual exploration of a particular genre, this photographic event is developing how its exhibition is presented. Following the storming success of the last festival, which welcomed nearly 47,700 visitors, Portrait(s) will now be hosted at Vichy's spectacular Grand Établissement Thermal, one of the city's most symbolic sites. As part of future events, the spaces in the Grand Établissement Thermal will house solo and group exhibitions, making it possible to explore a work in depth and enter the photographer's richly creative world.

For this first solo show, we are delighted to showcase one of the greatest photographers of the moment, British artist Nadav Kander . Kander's photographs impose silence and lead us into his very subtle world of gentleness, emotion, and fragility. This exceptional exhibition, curated alongside the artist, features a hundred works from his most iconic series, unpublished photographs, two movies, and an installation. By exhibiting these masterful pieces in this listed building, the City of Vichy and Portrait(s) are confirming their determination to support and defend photography, just as they have done for the last 12 years.

Portrait(s) is also continuing to support creativity by pursuing its policy of photographic assignments, with four residencies organized this year. Echoing Vichy's sporting side and the 2024 Paris Olympic Games – during which the Olympic Torch will be carried through Vichy – two sports-related residencies have been completed, one by young, emerging American photographer Arielle Bobb-Willis, and one by Vichy-based photographer Christophe Darbelet.

Arielle Bobb-Willis turned her artistic eye to a cast of 25 professional and semiprofessional athletes with and without disabilities, creating dynamic, boldly coloured images using a humorous, slightly offbeat approach. Her residency was supported by Cinq Étoiles Productions. Meanwhile, Christophe Darbelet took to the roads in and around Vichy to work with local football clubs. He is now presenting a gallery of portraits and landscapes, creating a metaphoric bridge between the two, with the players on one side and the environment on the other.

Of the other two residencies, the first was completed by Christophe Acker, who created a series of portraits and a movie about the students at Cavilam – Alliance Française, a school specialized in teaching French as a foreign language for 60 years. He lets the students express themselves fully in an examination of the sonority of the French language. The second was granted to Patrick Tourneboeuf, who worked on the shared architectural splendour of Vichy and Baden-Baden, two spa cities listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, sketching a mirrored portrait of Europe's great spa cities.

These commissioned photographic works will be displayed outside along the banks of the Allier River, on Place Saint-Louis, on the Parvis Simone Weil, and on the facade of the University, creating an open-air photographic walking tour.

Transmissions - The Portrait(s) Transmissions projects are returning to the festival, with Brigitte Patient's carte blanche exhibit La voix du regard offering an analysis of a photograph by Nelli Palomäki in a video and audio montage; Des mots pour voir with the support of Neuflize OBC, presenting works by Laura Henno; and Portrait(s) s'invite à l'école, which every year puts on activities introducing school children to photography.

This unmissable photography event is inviting you once again to celebrate culture and support creativity and freedom of expression. We can't wait to see you for the 12th edition. Welcome to Vichy!

FANY DUPÊCHEZ Artistic Director




NADAV KANDER: THE EDGE OF THINGS
London-based Nadav Kander is one of the great photographers and producers of our times, famous not only for his iconic portraits of major global figures but also for his monumental photographs of landscapes highlighting environmental issues. In the exquisite showcase of the Grand Établissement Thermal in Vichy, he offers a beautiful immersion in part of his work combining an installation, movies, and photographs, some of which have never been exhibited before. In this bespoke setting that brings out the poetry and preciousness of his work, he brilliantly intersects the lines of bodies and landscapes, expressing the intense emotions in faces and the spirit of places.

Nadav Kander is represented by Flowers Gallery, London and Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York City.

LA VOIX DU REGARD: Carte Blanche by Brigitte Patient
Brigitte Patient has gone through the decade of Portrait(s) exhibitions and has chosen one artist as a representative of this vast collection. She takes us on a visual journey, describing what she perceives, what she imagines, what she knows about the photographer and his or her place in the history of photography. Guided by her voice, visitors follow her gaze through a moving image that gradually reveals itself. This year, festivalgoers will have the chance to discover a photograph by Finnish artist Nelli Palomäki.

Brigitte Patient's singular way of speaking reveals itself in dialogue with a photograph, arousing curiosity and the desire to see.

Nelli Palomäki is represented by Les Filles du Calvaire Gallery, Paris.
Sound editing: Félix Fouchet


DES MOTS POUR VOIR: LAURA HENNO
Portrait(s) and the Neuflize OBC Foundation are pursuing the innovative project launched in 2018. The objective is to introduce the public to the exciting works in the Neuflize OBC Collection, while providing a platform for analysis and exchange about the works to encourage an open, ongoing dialogue between the public, academics, experts, and artists.

This year, three works by Laura Henno from the Neuflize OBC Collection are being exhibited for the duration of the festival. Comments by members of the public collected by the mediator before the exhibition will be presented in the exhibition room. The public's reactions have been recorded in a sound capsule, and provide a sincere, spontaneous view on different ways of understanding the images.

Laura Henno's photographs have a narrative potential that makes their meaning impossible to grasp, thus leaving them open to interpretation. She offers moments frozen in time, in which something important seems to be playing out in the lives of the people being photographed. The Cinquième Île series, which was shot on Réunion Island, adopts the artist's typical approach while simultaneously heralding a major change – a shift from the static, introspective individual portrait to a shared, dynamic setting of a social reality.

Passages taken from the text by Clément Dirié.
Mediation: Camille Carrias
Sound editing: Roman Chartier

PORTRAIT(S) S'INVITE À L'ÉCOLE
The Portrait(s) photography festival is continuing its activities aimed at school children with Portrait(s) s'invite à l'école, an initiative launched in 2017. This year, the festival has worked with a Year 5 class at the École Paul Bert with a new workshop on photography in reporting.

Under the guidance of Jérôme Schirtzinger of the Exhibitions Department and Cyrille Karam, a mediator and photographer, the class has studied the concept of bearing witness. The École Paul Bert is set to close permanently in late June; through portraits, the pupils wanted to leave their mark on the school and the people they have known in this shared space.

This workshop was made possible through the joint support of the teachers at the École Paul Bert and the City of Vichy.

PATRICK TOURNEBOEUF
FROM VICHY TO BADEN-BADEN, PORTRAITS OF EUROPEAN SPA CITIES AN ARCHITECTURAL DIALOGUE, UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE

Patrick Tourneboeuf is developing a long-term project on the transformations across Europe's vast heritage, particularly the work undertaken by the Grand Palais in Paris and the Château de Versailles. His work on architecture combines a dual documentary and artistic approach. As part of his residency, he is presenting spectacular images of Vichy and Baden-Baden, two spa cities that are both UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Photographed as mirror images, these two spa resorts developed in the mid-18th century, a period during which water cures led both to luxurious thermal baths and equally spectacular, sumptuous leisure structures.

Patrick Tourneboeuf is a member of the Tendance Floue Collective.


ARIELLE BOBB-WILLIS: CORPS À CORPS
Arielle Bobb-Willis is a young American photographer who was granted a residency at Vichy this year. In light of the upcoming 2024 Paris Olympic Games, her focus is on 25 professional and semi-professional athletes with and without disabilities – across all disciplines – who are training in the French capital's many state-of-the-art sports facilities. Her hyper-charged pictures, tinged with a generous dose of offbeat humour, represent sculptural compositions drawing on intertwined, dislocated, or fragmented bodies. Her eminently pictorial work, inspired by the surrealist school, creates a personal language based on interplaying relationships between form, shape, and colour.

Residency presented and produced with the support of Cinq Étoiles Productions and RVZ.

Production team: Dominick Noboa, Carolina Anselius and Brittany Lovoi.
Arielle Bobb-Willis is represented by Les filles du Calvaire Gallery, Paris.

CHRISTOPHE ACKER: LES VISAGES DU CAVILAM
Founded in 1964 by the City of Vichy and the Université de Clermont-Ferrand, Cavilam – Alliance Française is an institution renowned for the excellent quality of its classes teaching French as a foreign language. Each intake welcomes people from more than 70 nations. Christophe Acker, a French producer and photographer renowned for his videos for French and international artists, immersed himself in this exceptional institution this spring. His generous, playful approach resonated with his subjects, enabling him to compile a portrait gallery of students who had come from all over the world to learn French, while also letting them express themselves. The photographs, the movie, and the audio recordings are a testament to the unity that can be achieved by learning a common language.

CHRISTOPHE DARBELET: FANTAISIE FOOTBALL CLUBS
Christophe Darbelet is a Vichy-based photographer whose work includes pictures of football players captured during the moment of intense concentration just before they take a penalty kick. Alongside their sometimes stern, sometimes excited faces and their wild-eyed or taut expressions, he creates a contrast with panoramas of the Allier department in France. Its fields, landscapes, and other rustic scenes create metaphoric footbridges between the sheltered football pitch and the surrounding countryside stretching out as far as the eye can see. The art book Fantaisie Football Clubs is being published by Éditions Filigranes, with a text by French novelist Éric Chevillard.