“Brane-Cantenac seen by…” A new idea by Henri Lurton from Château Brane-Cantenac which has decided to feature the works of a different photographer each year. The first in the series, Patrick Durand, a photographer with the agency Sygma for 16 years, a resident of Bordeaux since 2008, is already one of the most renowned photographers in the Bordeaux vineyards.

“For me, Brane-Cantenac is a set of images filtered by my viewfinder: on the one hand, large close-ups of fresh morning dew, with translucent crystals left on each grape, ready to be absorbed by the day’s heat. On the other hand, on ageless bottles, stored in the half-light of the cellar, there are other small particles, this time white and persistent: the “dust of time”. I undoubtedly think of the path that separates and connects these two extremes - the grape and the nectar" he told us, when staying at the property.

At the beginning of the year, Henri Lurton's New Year's greetings had featured twelve of his original photos. The exhibition will include around thirty others, which can be discovered in the château’s large tasting room, in the artist’s presence.

Who is Patrick Durand? You might be wondering…

To retrace Patrick Durand’s background, it might be wise to do it in the strict sense: take a planisphere and a grease pencil, match each key date in his career with a precise point on the globe, and connect all the points using directional arrows.  But then all of the continents would disappear under a series of hatch lines worthy of Mikado. This is because the profession of news photographer is just as much a lifestyle, which consists in "never being there”. And therefore being everywhere. A fortiori when news is brewing and the profession is stable: that was the case of Patrick whose professional adventure started in the heyday of photojournalism. It is easier for fate to keep its promises when the times are favourable.

For Patrick, this turning point took place in 1973. He had just turned twenty and, like in adventure tales, left for Bangkok for three months that would become five years. A bit earlier, in the age of great friendships, he had used his and a friend's pocket money to purchase a first Canon. At night, like in photographers' tales, he developed black and white snapshots, awkwardly imitating Jean-Loup Sieff... During the day, before his dream of being a globe-trotter took him by the sleeve, he attended the advertising action of Académie Charpentier in Montparnasse for three years.

Laos, Malaysia, Indonesia: Patrick devoured all of southeast Asia in the form of slides that ended up in his luggage. In 1977, right after he arrived on the Australian soil, the airline Qantas purchased some of these brand-new pieces, which it turned into an advertising campaign for itself and into local dollars for Patrick.

The following year, in Tokyo, where he temporarily acted as a “fashion photographer” for various magazines, Patrick benefited from a fortunate, very Japanese, misunderstanding. Spellbound by a brand-new fisheye lens (lenses that produce distorted photos with their 180° wide angle), Patrick innocently took the experience further by using the distorting lens on the podiums. In this, the Japanese press saw the bold approach of a photographer who was soooooooooo French, and praised his good taste in its columns on multiple occasions.

It was in 1979 that Patrick moved on, shall we say, “to serious matters”. Back in France, he was hired as a news photographer by VSD, which had just been created. He then moved to New York for four years: a regular freelancer for Paris Match then a correspondent for Figaro Magazine, he joined the SIPA agency in 1983, his images of the Lebanon War speaking for him. El Salvador, Guatemala, South Africa (where he was based for 3 years until Mandela’s release): Patrick alternated between conflicts and magazine topics on assignment for major international press publications; as “assignment” in French evokes the notion of “confinement" in English (e.g. home confinement/house arrest), it can be said that news photographers are tirelessly "assigned" before History.

In fact, at Agency Sygma, which he joined in 1986 and left, like most of the staff, when it was bought by an American group in 2002, the list of his reports sounds like a short brochure of modern history with falsely enchanting sounds that are sometimes sadly familiar: Gold Diggers in the Philippines, The Ouvéa Cave, The Seoul Olympics, Tiananmen Tanks, The fall of Ceausescu, The Gulf War, The Siege of Sarajevo, The surrender of Bob Denard in the Comoros, Bertrand Piccard’s non-stop balloon flight around the world (of which Patrick was the sole photographer, just after the legendary landing in the Egyptian desert)...

How much did these images, which remained part of common memory, take from the people they captured? What sacrifices, what encounters, what degree of luck lie under the surface? And what weaknesses, what lessons do we learn from viewing these other selves caught in other traps on the other side of the world? Is the memory of having contemplated death present every day?

Patrick never really answers such questions. The idea of focusing the camera on himself is not one that pleases him. Great reporters are rarely very talkative about their own shadows.

Conversely, Patrick willingly talks about the world around him: the news, of course, but also aviation, which he has long practiced at the controls of a Cessna or Mooney 20.

More recently, there was his discovery and command of virtual tours, a photographic method that literally crosses the screen and plunges into the heart of an image, where you can move about autonomously, at 360°. A real emerging revolution in the world of visual communication. Here once again, an avid fan of modern technologies, Patrick was in tune with the time.

And then of course, since he decided to move to Bordeaux two years ago, there is his encounter with the world of wine and the intriguing universe of châteaux: a perfect challenge for his gaze that can pass through walls. And that is exactly how he sees it. Because, in the trenches of the vineyards, just 30 km from his home, it is always on the qui-vive, like in war, that Patrick tracks down his subjects. You need to look at the images. Because the photographer’s word is volatile. In wine vocabulary, we call this the “angel’s share".

Bérangère Erouart.