Fondation Carmignac
Reportage for Provence Méditerranée
The Fondation Carmignac on Porquerolles
For Provence Méditerranée, the Toulon metropolitan tourism board, Laurent Parienti photographed the Fondation Carmignac on the island of Porquerolles. A commission at the crossroads of fine art photography, architecture and heritage promotion.
Villa Carmignac
At the heart of Port-Cros National Park, Villa Carmignac is unlike any other place in France. The foundation, created in 2000 by Édouard Carmignac and now directed by Charles Carmignac, opened the villa to the public in June 2018.
The building is a Provençal farmhouse that melts into the landscape. It houses 2,000 m² of exhibition space lit by a spectacular water ceiling. This former farm, glimpsed in Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le Fou, has become a setting for contemporary art that respects the island.
Photographing it means capturing the play of light through the roof of glass and water, and that rare fusion of building, art and nature.
The sculpture garden
Designed by landscape architect Louis Benech, the 15-hectare park is home to some fifteen monumental sculptures. Works from the collection (Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Gerhard Richter…) converse with umbrella pines, holm oaks, vines and Provençal cane.
Cane screens reveal and conceal the works. Light reshapes the volumes through the day, and shadows transform the sculptures from hour to hour: exceptional ground for a photographer.
A commission for Provence Méditerranée
As photographer for the Provence Méditerranée tourism board, Laurent Parienti documented the Fondation Carmignac to promote the cultural heritage of the metropolitan area and its twelve towns. The images are used in Provence Méditerranée's communication, to promote its cultural offer, on provencemed.com and in print and digital materials.
Photographing contemporary art
The villa’s exhibitions, L'Île intérieure, Le Songe d’Ulysse and Vertigo, were conceived by curators such as Jean-Marie Gallais, Francesco Stocchi and Matthieu Poirier, each with its own scenography. Photographing them calls for documentary rigour and sensitivity: conveying the staging without betraying the works.
Porquerolles, an island to photograph
Reachable only by boat from La Tour Fondue in Hyères, the island has kept a rare authenticity. Laurent Parienti also works there as official photographer of the Porquerolles Film Festival and for Jazz à Porquerolles. He knows the island intimately.
Museums and cultural institutions
This collaboration between L’Œil des Cyclopes and the Fondation Carmignac is part of wider work with museums and institutions: the British Museum for ethnographic assignments, the MuCEM, and galleries and foundations on the French Riviera.
Architecture that disappears
Villa Carmignac is a fine example of contemporary architectural photography. A semi-buried building that recedes into the landscape, a water roof that answers the nearby sea, raw materials (concrete, stone, glass). This architecture by Wilmotte & Associés calls for an eye able to show both a bold gesture and a building that blends into its site.
