For our 2018 edition, French photographer Olivier Föllmi was the festival’s guest of honor.
Born in 1958 and of Franco-Swiss and Italian nationality, Olivier Föllmi obtained a travel grant at the age of 17 and set off to discover Asia. For a few years, he was divided between Zanskar, the photographer’s favorite region, and the West, enriching himself with the values of these two worlds.
A humanist photographer and tireless traveler, specialist in Tibetan village culture, Olivier Föllmi traveled on foot through the little-known valleys of the Himalayas for 20 years before photographing each continent on the planet for another 20 years in search of their wisdom. He is the author of a work consisting of 36 books translated into nine languages, published in more than a million and a half copies and several films..
Of Franco-Swiss and Italian origins, he has amazed a wide audience for more than three decades through his images, films, stories and conferences. An essential reference for travel photographers, winner of the World Press Photo Contest and numerous prestigious awards, Olivier Föllmi, whose work is exhibited in galleries around the world, has been recognized as one of the 15 leading photographers of the 21st century.
The main objects of Olivier Föllmi’s work are the richness of the planet and the importance of the interactions that exist between man and his environment. It is based on a desire to “photograph beings who inspire wisdom (…) and cultivate hope for a promising future”. Always marked with a rare intensity and emotion, his work reveals portraits of men, women and children encountered during his travels with whom the traveling photographer has obviously established personal or personal relationships. of empathy.
His portraits are often imbued with melancholy or a feeling of interiority. His landscapes and the observation of light, fleeting, on the reliefs, the textures of wood, stones, leaves, the changing seasons and the passing of time, are often images which illustrate, like the movement romantic of the 19th century, the smallness of Man in the immensity of nature. His landscapes evoke a reflection on the place of humans in his universe. The attention to detail conveys the magic of water, wind, light and the beauty of nature, often untouched. Genre scenes, true miniatures, with great pictorial qualities, poetically punctuate the entire exhibition route. They reflect a Western culture of painting which is transposed, through the photography and sensitivity of Olivier Föllmi, into the 20th century.
Link of his website : https://www.olivier-follmi.net/
