Particularly caring about to the actions of the BAL and its platform La Fabrique du Regard to teach young people to better analyse images, we wished to support it. This initiative is also proving to be a unique bridge between the two pillars of the Foundation: inclusive education and cultural patronage. The support of the Foundation will particularly focus on the development of the programme “Mon Journal du Monde” dedicated to teenagers away from culture aged 11 to 15.          

 Gerardo Custance, Antienza,
Guadalajara, 2007

Gerardo Custance,

Arcos de Jalon,
Perimetro #3, 2010 

Born in Spain in 1976, Gerardo Custance is a graduate in photography from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. In 2004-2005 he obtained a master’s degree in documentary photography from the University of Westminster in London. He embarked on his Perímetro project in 2006, having received a scholarship for artistic creativity from the Castile-León Museum of Contemporary Art. In 2008, he received a grant for visual arts from the Botín Foundation enabling him to complete this project, which was published in book form by EXIT Publications in 2010.

Gerardo Custance has been involved in several international exhibitions since November 2008, when he first exhibited at the Galerie Polaris in Paris. His work features in many collections, including those of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, the Centre National des Arts Plastiques and of the Castile-León Museum of Contemporary Art.

The amazing pictorial abundance of Gerardo Custance’s photographs emphasises the relationship between man and nature, focusing on empty, almost imaginary landscapes, forcing the viewer back into his own interior world. The artist’s eye captures the strange overlapping of old and new, human and inhuman, constantly coming back to the question of traces and of document/monument articulation.

 Raymond Depardon, Dieppe,

Seine-Maritime,
de la Série La France, 2009

© Raymond Depardon /
MAGNUM Photos

Raymond Depardon,
Bédarieux, Hérault, de

la Série La France, 2007

© Raymond Depardon /
MAGNUM Photos  

Born on 6 July 1942 to a farming family in Villefranche-sur-Saône, Raymond Depardon took his first photographs as a child on his parents’ farm and began his career as a photojournalist in Paris in 1958, covering minor news stories and fashionable celebrities. Switching between human interest stories and foreign correspondence, he reported on numerous political events and international conflicts (such as those in Chad and Chile). As a photographer, his work was awarded the French Grand Prix National de la Photographie in 1991 and regularly features in exhibitions both in France and abroad: at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris as part of the Paris Magnum exhibition, and at the Grand Palais and MUCEM for the exhibition Un moment si doux (2014-2015); notably, his La France series was shown at the BnF François Mitterrand in 2010-2011.

As well as being a renowned photographer, Raymond Depardon is also an acclaimed film-maker. Pieces of note include Journal de France (2012), documenting the creation of the eponymous photographic series; the Profils paysans trilogy (2000, 2005 and 2008); 1974, une partie de campagne (2002) which follows Valéry Giscard d’Estaing’s first American-style election campaign; and also a series on justice including Muriel Leferle (1999), Délits flagrants (1994) and Faits divers (1983).

In 2004, Raymond Depardon decided to take a “crazy and personal decision to photograph (alone, with just a 20x25 view camera) provincial France. I had abandoned the France of my youth and I owed it to myself to spend time trying to understand it.”

Gone were images of the capital, tourist at tractions and clichés; in their place were pictures of a back-country marked by the development policies of the authorities, where modern transformations testify to the onward march of history. Raymond Depardon mainly photographs empty spaces: silhouettes and portraits are rare or absent in his images. “I wanted to return to the silent nature of photography”, he wrote. French people are indeed present, but only through their absence, in the places that bear witness to their shared daily story: cafés, bars, post offices, schools, cinemas and bakeries.

This is the France that we see before us: criss-crossed with our footprints, often banal and sometimes difficult to pinpoint. Raymond Depardon sets us loose in a place that could be anywhere, inviting us to find our bearings in locations that are, in and of themselves, portraits and characters.

Find out more on www.palmeraieetdesert.fr

 Joan Fontcuberta,
Diptyque Phantom,

Pin Zhuang, 2001

Internationally renowned Catalan photographer Joan Fontcuberta was born in Barcelona in 1955. He continues to live and work there as a multidisciplinary artist, theorist, teacher and curator.

He styles himself as a self-taught artist whose intellectual training stems from the information and communication sciences. He emphasises the educational nature of his work, showing the image – the reconstruction of reality – as a trap into which we always project meaning and where the photograph is a mirror or “script of appearances”. He therefore sets about distorting the images and documents and using all available tricks to call into question the "truth” of the photograph.

His photographs feature among the collections of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, MoMA in San Francisco, the National Gallery in Ottawa, the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the MACBA in Barcelona, among others. His work has been the subject of a huge number of individual exhibitions, most particularly at MoMA in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, IVAM in Valencia, the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome and the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille as well as the Casa de la Moneda in Bogota.

He co-founded the magazine Photovision, where he was editor-in-chief for 20 years, and has published several books on history, aesthetics and the teaching of photography. He was also artistic director with Rencontres photographiques d’Arles.

In the Pin Zhuang series, Joan Fontcuberta concerns himself with China’s confiscation of an American fighter plane and its subsequent complete dismantling. Following diplomatic negotiations, the Chinese returned the aircraft; however, it had been reassembled in a totally absurd way. The tool of destruction had thus become useless, having been transformed into a beautiful object reminiscent of science fiction. So, this “ready-made flying machine” reflects the confrontation between authority and subversion, respect and intervention.

Joan Fontcuberta’s thinking is structured around the systematic questioning of forms of representation with projects that are as artistic as they are sociological.

Find out more on www.fontcuberta.com

 Charles Fréger,
SAOTOME 3 Ayashi,

Sendai, Miyagi préfecture,
2013 - 2015

Charles Fréger,
FÂMÂ Ishigakijima,

Okinawa préfecture,
2013 - 2015

A French photographer, born in 1975 in Bourges, Charles Fréger graduated from Rouen’s École des Beaux-Arts in 2000. He founded the network and art publishing house Piece of Cake, which gathers together European and American artists. Charles Fréger has pursued, since the early 2000s, a collection entitled Portraits photographiques et uniformes. Taken in Europe and all over the world, this series is devoted to groups of sportsmen, soldiers and students, and focuses on his interest in outfits and uniforms. He has already exhibited in Japan, at the Forum Hermès in Tokyo (2016), in China at the Lianzhou Foto Festival (2015) and in Mexico at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo in Monterrey (2014). In France, a monographic exhibition was dedicated to him in 2013 at the MAC/VAL. Charles Fréger is also one of the major artists introduced at the Rencontres Photographiques d’Arles in 2016.

In his work, Charles Fréger uses all the elements of a detailed photographic vocabulary made up of centre-framed compositions which are often full frontal, full length, upper-body or close-ups. The transparency of the lighting and the neutrality of the expression through images which are very sensitive to the quality of the skin and the texture of the clothes, suggest a reference to the portraits painted by the old masters.

In 2013, just after finishing his European tour of winter masquerades (Wilder Mann), Charles Fréger began a photography project exploring Japan’s masked ritual figures. This is the subject matter of the 10 prints that are now part of the Linklaters Collection and that belong to the Yokainoshima series. These are also the subject of a book published by Actes Sud. Yokai, oni, tengu and kappa, which can be translated as ghosts, monsters, ogres and goblins, are ritual figures imagined by man and embodied during festivals and ceremonies as an attempt to tame the elements and find meaning in natural events.

Find out more on www.charlesfreger.com

 Joan Fontcuberta,
Diptyque Phantom,

Pin Zhuang, 2001

Internationally renowned Catalan photographer Joan Fontcuberta was born in Barcelona in 1955. He continues to live and work there as a multidisciplinary artist, theorist, teacher and curator.

He styles himself as a self-taught artist whose intellectual training stems from the information and communication sciences. He emphasises the educational nature of his work, showing the image – the reconstruction of reality – as a trap into which we always project meaning and where the photograph is a mirror or “script of appearances”. He therefore sets about distorting the images and documents and using all available tricks to call into question the "truth” of the photograph.

His photographs feature among the collections of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, MoMA in San Francisco, the National Gallery in Ottawa, the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the MACBA in Barcelona, among others. His work has been the subject of a huge number of individual exhibitions, most particularly at MoMA in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, IVAM in Valencia, the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome and the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille as well as the Casa de la Moneda in Bogota.

He co-founded the magazine Photovision, where he was editor-in-chief for 20 years, and has published several books on history, aesthetics and the teaching of photography. He was also artistic director with Rencontres photographiques d’Arles.

In the Pin Zhuang series, Joan Fontcuberta concerns himself with China’s confiscation of an American fighter plane and its subsequent complete dismantling. Following diplomatic negotiations, the Chinese returned the aircraft; however, it had been reassembled in a totally absurd way. The tool of destruction had thus become useless, having been transformed into a beautiful object reminiscent of science fiction. So, this “ready-made flying machine” reflects the confrontation between authority and subversion, respect and intervention.

Joan Fontcuberta’s thinking is structured around the systematic questioning of forms of representation with projects that are as artistic as they are sociological.

Find out more on www.fontcuberta.com

 Carl de Keyzer,
Thames estuary,
Royaume-Uni, 2009
© Carl de Keyzer /
MAGNUM Photos

Carl de Keyzer,
Blankenberge,
Belgique, 2006
© Carl de Keyzer /
MAGNUM Photos 

A French photographer, born in 1975 in Bourges, Charles Fréger graduated from Rouen’s École des Beaux-Arts in 2000. He founded the network and art publishing house Piece of Cake, which gathers together European and American artists. Charles Fréger has pursued, since the early 2000s, a collection entitled Portraits photographiques et uniformes. Taken in Europe and all over the world, this series is devoted to groups of sportsmen, soldiers and students, and focuses on his interest in outfits and uniforms. He has already exhibited in Japan, at the Forum Hermès in Tokyo (2016), in China at the Lianzhou Foto Festival (2015) and in Mexico at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo in Monterrey (2014). In France, a monographic exhibition was dedicated to him in 2013 at the MAC/VAL. Charles Fréger is also one of the major artists introduced at the Rencontres Photographiques d’Arles in 2016.

In his work, Charles Fréger uses all the elements of a detailed photographic vocabulary made up of centre-framed compositions which are often full frontal, full length, upper-body or close-ups. The transparency of the lighting and the neutrality of the expression through images which are very sensitive to the quality of the skin and the texture of the clothes, suggest a reference to the portraits painted by the old masters.

In 2013, just after finishing his European tour of winter masquerades (Wilder Mann), Charles Fréger began a photography project exploring Japan’s masked ritual figures. This is the subject matter of the 10 prints that are now part of the Linklaters Collection and that belong to the Yokainoshima series. These are also the subject of a book published by Actes Sud. Yokai, oni, tengu and kappa, which can be translated as ghosts, monsters, ogres and goblins, are ritual figures imagined by man and embodied during festivals and ceremonies as an attempt to tame the elements and find meaning in natural events.

Find out more on www.charlesfreger.com

Manuela Marques,
Contact 2, 2011

Born in Portugal in 1959, Manuela Marques lives and works in Paris. In 2011 she was awarded the BES Photo Prize by the Coleção Berardo Museum in Lisbon. In 2014, the exhibition Manuela Marques, La taille de ce vent est un triangle dans l’eau (The shape of this wind is a triangle in the water) saw a significant part of her most recent photographic work on display at the Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian, in Paris.

Just as a state of ecstasy can disturb and unsettle, her work conjures up a remarkable, fascinating world, whole and multi-faceted at the same time, and infinitely subtle. The lack of response to the questions posed by her subjects is an essential aspect of the artist’s photographs, as if designed to upset and disturb the onlooker. Here there is no absolute finding, no revelation. Everything operates through a process of seeking, questioning and enquiry, even the very way in which the artist works.

By chipping away at appearances, Manuela Marques unsettles and disturbs. Because her harmonies are both seductive and misleading she also creates confusion. Her still life work and her bodies with familiar lines make sense even if we don’t see the clues. This is because Manuela Marques actually intends these clues to be as obscure as possible, with her off-beat compositions, her games of construction and deconstruction, these empty and full spaces which constantly contradict one another.

Find out more on www.galerieannebarrault.com  

Edgar Martins,
Mobile gantry for the
Vega launcher,
seen from underneath,

CSG-Europe’s spaceport,

Kourou, French Guiana,

2013 © Edgar Martins

Edgar Martins,
Yuri Gagarine Cosmonaut

Training Center,

Star City,

Russian Federation,

2013 © Edgar Martins

Born in Portugal in 1977, Edgar Martins grew up in Macao and works in London. He has recently exhibited at the 54th Venice Biennale, MoMA in New York, the Centre Culturel Calouste Gulbenkian in Paris, the Centro Cultural Hélio Oiticia in Rio de Janeiro and the Gallery of Photography in Dublin. His works are displayed in numerous public and private collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon and the Carmignac Foundation in Paris.

His series The Rehearsal of Space & the Poetic Impossibility to Manage the Infinite – from which the three photographs in the Linklaters Collection stem – is the fruit of a collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA).

In 2012, Edgar Martins was given access to the research sites of ESA and its partners, notably in relation to manned space flights as well as exploration programmes to the Moon and to Mars. Over a two-year period, he travelled to around 20 strategic locations that have never been open to the public in Europe, French Guiana, Russia and Kazakhstan, as well as launch sites and astronaut training centres.

The composition and hyperrealism of the images contrast sharply with the veil of secrecy and mystery that generally surrounds spacerelated activities. Though rarely seen by the public, the subjects photographed in The Rehearsal of Space seem strangely familiar, underscoring the influence of popular culture in the development of our understanding of space exploration.

Compromising more than 90 photographs, the approach taken in the series is twofold: it is descriptive yet speculative, falling somewhere between reality and fiction. In this way, Edgar Martins highlights the policies of space exploration and the key role played by science and technology in our societies, as well as our relationship with the unknown.

Find out more on www.edgarmartins.com

 James McDivitt, Ed White,

première sortie

extravéhiculaire américaine :

survol du Golfe de Mexico

(Gemini 4),

3 juin 1965 

William Anders,

La Terre (Apollo 8),

décembre 1968 

50 years ago, on 3 June 1965, above the Gulf of Mexico, Ed White took his place in the history books. He conducted the first US spacewalk (Soviet astronaut Alexey Leonov had become the first human to do so a few months earlier), during the first flight to last more than a day, in the first mission of the space age to be broadcast live in Europe and monitored for the first time from the brand-new NASA control centre near Houston, Texas.

The 17 NASA photographs in the Linklaters Collection comprise prints from this era and bear the NASA stamp, legends and reference numbers.

NASA only offered a small number of the photographs to the media following each mission, the remainder being accessible only to accredited researchers in the archives of the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. Most of these photographs were not kept by press and TV departments because they considered them to be of fleeting interest; they therefore disposed of them in the early 80s, when the conquest of space was no longer in the news. Since the 1990s, NASA has itself stepped up this process of physically destroying the prints as it archived them online.

At the outset of the space age, NASA had not envisaged the impact that photography could have within its programme. Those in charge were slow to realise the immense public interest in these images. The first two astronauts, Alan Shepard and Virgil Grissom, did not take a camera, while the third, John Glenn, had to buy one at a local drugstore before departure. This attitude on the part of NASA was summed up in a departmental note: “If the astronaut desires, he may carry a camera with him”.

These images tell the story of the conquest of space, from the first spacewalk by Ed White in July 1965 to the last lunar missions, from Apollo 8 to Apollo 17 (1968-1972), including, of course, the first steps taken by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon in 1969.

Mathieu Pernot,

Les implosions,

Mantes-la-Jolie,

1er juillet 2001

Mathieu Pernot,

Le Meilleur des Mondes,

2006 

Born in 1970, Mathieu Pernot lives and works in Paris. After completing his studies at the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles, he worked on various projects concerning issues of urbanism, immigration and people of no status, at the boundary between politics and intimacy, using documentary work and installations. In 1998, he was awarded a grant from Villa Médicis and has won a number of prizes, including the Nadar Prize in 2013 and the Niépce Prize in 2014. To date, 11 books have been published about his work. After having exhibited in many prestigious venues, such as the Centre National de la Photographie, the Nicéphore Niépce Museum and the Rencontres d’Arles (2007, 2002 and 1997), two major exhibitions were devoted to his work in 2014, La Traversée at the Jeu de Paume Museum, and l’Asile des photographies at the Maison Rouge.

Three series will now feature in the Linklaters collection: Implosions, Le Meilleur des Mondes and Les Témoins. All of these offer a glimpse into large housing estates: the utopian ideals that prompted their creation and the buildings themselves.

Between 2000 and 2008, at the height of the debate on urban renewal, Mathieu Pernot photographed the destruction of the tower blocks built in the suburbs of large French cities. Spectacular symbols, these implosions represent the movement from existence to nothingness, wiping out a past to be forgotten, the destruction of one world and the replacement of an old utopian ideal by a new policy of urban renewal. These dynamited blocks are captured in a cloud of smoke – a fragile moment at the point of eruption – a beguiling but tragic beauty.

In 2006, while continuing with this work, Mathieu Pernot recovered a collection of postcards dating from 1950 to 1980. These views of multi-occupancy buildings were widely circulated as symbols of progress and of modernity. The artist went on to reproduce and enlarge them under the title Le Meilleur des Mondes (The Best of Worlds), thus creating a monument to the failed ideal of an urban utopia.

Zooming in on these images, the artist tracks down the inhabitants, snapshots of life, creating the Les Témoins (The Witnesses) series. Disembodied ghosts, apparitions that seemingly dissolve into colour and the printing process: they are fragile fragments of a story that has yet to be told.

Find out more on www.mathieupernot.com

 Bernard Plossu,

Clé de Zanot,

Milan, Italie, 2009

Bernard Plossu,

Kim Basinger,

Santa Fe,

Nouveau Mexique, 1984 

Born in Vietnam in 1945, Bernard Plossu came to photography very early on: in 1958, he visited the Sahara with his father and, in 1965, left for Mexico as part of an English expedition to photograph the Chiapas jungle. He would later say that this trip to Mexico gave him the opportunity to find his own style and forge his vision.

A number of colour reportage series followed, featuring Mayan Indians, California, the American West, Nevada and the Mid-West. In 1970, while completing a piece on India, he developed the idea of “surbanaliste” photography, which, like surrealism, brings out the immanent intensity of banality but in a less romantic way.

Considered at present as one of the most renowned French photographers, his successful career has been acknowledged by several awards including the Grand prix national de la photographie (1988).

Many retrospective exhibitions have been devoted to him, including at the Centre Georges Pompidou (1988), the Museum for Photographic Arts in San Diego (1989), the Instituto Valenciano of the Modern Art of Valencia (1997) and the Musée d’Art moderne et contemporain de Strasbourg (2007).

In 2012, the Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie in Besancon organised an exhibition of his work, in which over 200 of his images, retracing his celebrated Mexican trip, for example, were displayed, highlighting the encounter of the photographer with his subject. Bernard Plossu has been at the heart of the cultural scene since 2013. He has exhibited in Marseille, at the Centre de la Vieille Charité, in Aix en Provence at the Musée Granet, and in Montpellier as part of a major retrospective entitled Plossu Colours – Photographic Sequences, 1956-2013 at the Pavillon Populaire, from which the series of colour images which feature in the Linklaters Collection have been selected. In 2015, he was the subject of a major retrospective entitled Bernard Plossu’s Italy, at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris.

His work has evolved in perfect harmony with developments in French contemporary photography. His sensual images, with their impassive, silent vibrations, speak to us of the soft texture of bodies, of matter, of movement and other “intermediate landscapes”. He often brings an autobiographical approach to subjects such as travel, space and family and his work features an intimate subtext and a language that has become a strong marker of his work as the years go by.

Find out more on www.galeriecameraobscura.fr

 Simon Roberts,

Teignmouth,

Royaume-Uni, 2008

Simon Roberts,

Bornemouth,

Royaume-Uni, 2008 

Born in London in 1974, Simon Roberts is a young photographer living in Brighton in the United Kingdom.

Two years after Motherland, a piece focusing on Russia and mainly consisting of portraits, Simon Roberts published We English, in which he uses 56 photographs to explore his curiosity for his country of birth, through which, between 2007 and 2008, he took his family on a year’s camper tour in a bid to recapture his childhood memories, to understand his roots and to reflect on what it is to be English. The Pierdom series, from which the images appearing in the Linklaters collection have been selected, were presented in a work published in 2013; in a truly accomplished body of work, he pays tribute to the pleasure piers characteristic of the British coastline, which are monumental relics of Victorian engineering and eccentricity.

To depict British pastimes and traditions, Simon Roberts turned to the landscapes of England, which take centre stage in We English and literally surround the inhabitants, as if geography actually takes priority over history. Without being reduced to an eccentric catalogue or simple caricature, Simon Roberts’ photographs exude a feeling of tranquillity and an impression of simple and natural pleasures.

As a photographer, Simon Roberts has received numerous accolades, most notably the Vic Odden Award from the Royal Photographic Society (2007), which is offered for a notable achievement in the art of photography by a British photographer. In 2010, We English took third prize in the World Press Photo contest.

Find out more on www.simoncroberts.com