One city, one photographer. Stunning photo albums from Louis Vuitton’s Fashion Eye books

A statue, a theater of shadows, a cottage. With or without color, these archive or current images, raw or processed, seem as far away as Vienna from Hong Kong and Hong Kong from Deauville. The fact remains that these photos, signed by Stephanie Moshammer, Frank Horvath and Omar Victor Diop, are on the cover of the last three titles in the same collection, Fashion Eye, which itself is the latest addition to Louis Vuitton. All credit goes to Julien Guerrier, the editor-in-chief of the house, who died suddenly in January, who, after the “City Guides” and “Travel Books” issued twenty-five and ten years ago, thus renewed the invitation; travel.

Because elsewhere lies the core of the luxury trunk maker’s values, valued by renowned geographers since 1854. Gone are the insider addresses and sketchbooks, making way for yesterday’s and today’s fashion photographers snapping a portrait. city, region, country. The carte blanche given to current talent sits alongside the ancient portfolios of holy monsters. As evidenced by the first five works published in November 2016, which revisited Henry Clarke’s India, Guy Bourdain’s Miami, Jeanloup Siff’s Paris or Wing Shiai’s Shanghai (Wong Kar-Wai’s right arm), and Courtney Roy. , the rising star of auto fiction, was headed to California.

Racy design

Since then, the catalog has been enriched with about forty references, united by their round corners, zechina, saffron or grenadine canvases, faithful to the prestigious design of Frederic Bortolotti. Inside, the paper, binding and model adapt to the style and genre of the author’s geography. An exception is the rule. “Except for the three horizontal double-page spreads at the beginning and end,” explains publisher and consultant Patrick Remy, praising his enormous freedom as the book’s director. The same observation for the curator of the Palais Galliera’s photography collection, Sylvie Lecallier, who happily manages the albums dedicated to the glories of the past. Among his offerings “always greeted with interest” was a platinum print by Baron Adolph de Meyer, a close artist of Alfred Stieglitz, who had honeymooned in Asia in the spring of 1900.

There, the aristocrat stops in front of the temples and gardens of Kobe, Tokyo and Nagasaki. Preserved at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, these good memories of the Meiji era demonstrate the fruitful dialogue established with institutions and estates (organizations that manage artistic heritage) that “have every interest in the dissemination of their funds.” Recently, Sylvie Lecalier has studied the case of Frank Horvath, who was sent to Hong Kong in 1962 by, among others, the German magazine Revue. From the British colony, having traveled in the company of the writer Dieter Lattmann, the reporter brings back prints full of faces, signs and symbols, most of them unpublished. Other throwbacks approach, like Deborah Tourbeville’s Mexico, whose hazy collages, full of grain and melancholy, float this winter at Lausanne’s Photo Élysée museum.

Ways of seeing and moving have changed over time. “The unknown has become familiar,” laments Sylvie Lecallier, pointing to the tools of progress that reduce distances and slow down the imagination. It certainly hasn’t been easier to get out glued to the screen without moving. Everything is known, prepared, “to the detriment of a certain freshness of vision”. To ensure that the surprise effect lasts, artist Damien Poulin, another expert commissioned by Éditions Vuitton, takes care to “take art and commercial photographers out of their comfort zone”, “accustomed to the precise short answer”. So for the Dutchwoman Sarah Van Ridge, who was sent to Seoul almost against her will; Reflections and shadows break reality, this chaos is made up of things, people, elements. There is movement in his street scenes, still shots where life goes on. The royal palace can be seen from the taxi window amidst the neon lights and modern buildings. “I don’t set any limits except that I can clearly identify the place we’re talking about,” clarifies Damien Poulin.

Offset framing

However, capturing the spirit of the wild is not obvious to the passing stranger who is inevitably isolated from his surroundings. After spending six weeks in isolation in Tahiti, Jonathan Llense felt this gap. The small “artificial paradise” turns out to be hostile to the native Au de France. If his usual column, issued last summer, can hardly ignore bays, hibiscus and sunsets, it mainly frames stray dogs, abandoned vehicles and arranged rums, without quality motifs “far from the postcard”. Distorted, his vision adds up to the sum of subjective impressions that, from Lagos to Venice, Texas to Normandy, reveal the underbelly of maps. This is the only pretense of beautiful books free from the performance obligations of the LVMH flagship; complete the puzzle of the world. Envisioning a possible departure, each piece combines the picturesque and the artistic, reminding us that what matters is not arriving at your destination. Transportation is also part of the journey: in 2019, Sarah Moon took the Orient Express. In 2022, Coco Captain boarded the Trans-Siberian Railway.

Glamour

Casualties of their success: a third of the volumes, although printed in 3,000 to 5,000 copies, have already been printed: Saint-Tropez by Osma Harvilahti, Monte-Carlo by Helmut Newton, French Riviera by Slim Aaron… The same also applies; Iran, by Harley Weir, a guarantee of attention to conflict zones. Two years before the Russian invasion, Ukraine looked like Eden in the eyes of the duo Synchrodogs who went to the Carpathians. Soon Patrick Bienert, a reserved genius fascinated by the intrigues of Eastern Europe and teenagers, will stay in Armenia. Glamor and mockery are also in the program. this spring, Martin Parr will take another X-ray of the United Kingdom, from the Coronation Party to the Glastonbury Festival, while Amanda Charcian will take root at Chateau Marmont, a haven for expats. breath stars with the Los Angeles hill in the background.

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