Champ et hors-champ (carte blanche by Patrick Gilliéron Lopreno)

Swiss photographer Patrick Gilliéron Lopreno offers us a «carte blanche» of photographs dedicated to the Swiss painter Eugène Burnand to mark the centenary of his death.

I've been familiar with the work of naturalist painter Eugène Burnand for many years. I've been to the Musée Eugène Burnand many times to see his paintings. The ones that touched me most were those done in the Camargue. The pastel colors allow the sky, sea and sand to intermingle in a dynamic of color, releasing the emotion trapped in a too-righteous respect for reality. At this intersection, I perceived Burnand's beautiful opposition between reality and lyricism. Even in his meticulous concern to paint what he saw, down to the last comma, the painter, on the other hand, cannot fight his own feelings. As he paints, he infuses his brush with his own vision of reality, and thus with a certain subjectivity.

Read also | Fields, an ode to Swiss farmers

While Eugène Burnand is part of the naturalist pictorial movement, which gives his paintings a kind of objectivism, his composition, choice of colors and technique do not detract from a certain subjectivism. In my opinion, the syncretism of these two opposing tendencies gives birth to the work and the artist; otherwise, we'd be falling into a kind of Soviet realism before its time. Art is first and foremost the expression of man's feelings, and propaganda, the imposition of a school style that effectively abolishes the artist.

Two years ago, I began a photographic project on the farming world, which led to the publication of the book Fields, in March of this year. For months and months, I criss-crossed the same countryside painted by Eugène Burnand. I loved it, deeply. The landscapes of morning mists, the low summer light, the dense earth of ploughed fields and the men of character who populate it give the impression that eternity inhabits it. I was truly influenced in my approach by the work of the Moudon painter, and this aesthetic duality between realism and lyricism has been with me since my earliest works. It's obvious to me that poetry is to be found in reality. The poet Philippe Jaccottet rightly said so.

In July 2020, I contacted Justin Favrod of the Eugène Burnand Museum Foundation to propose a photographic «carte blanche» for the centenary of Eugène Burnand's death. I was enthusiastically received and my request was approved by the Foundation's committee.

So I was free to work around the painter and confront him in a vital, peaceful struggle. I chose four axes, like chapters, to build my exhibition «Champ et hors-champ», which is currently on show from May to October at the Musée Eugène Burnand in Moudon.

My first series of photographs is called «photos-tableaux». In fact, I wanted to use photographic and naturalistic settings to create images that were like paintings, and that tended to resemble Eugène Burnand's canvases, albeit photographic. I was influenced by the paintings: Bull in the Alps (1884) and The farmer (1894).

Then, as if with a notebook, I took photos at the Domaine du Seppey and went inside the painter's studio, now abandoned. I was deeply moved, as the place is still charged with the artist's presence; comparable to Cézanne's studio in Aix-en-Provence, if you visit it on your own. Under a table, I found family albums, travel diaries, press clippings and, on the walls, paintings by David Burnand. By chance, as I opened one of the albums, I came across a photograph of Eugène Burnand seated on a bench with his wife Julia (Girardet). It gave off an impression of serenity and love. It was this face-to-face encounter with these two human faces that endeared me even more to this man who, despite a certain austerity and his membership of the Free Church, must have been a loving husband and exemplary family man. Suddenly, a connection between two distant and different times made me love the man and not just the painter.

After working on the Seppey estate, I went up to Vuillens to photograph the chapel and cemetery, where most of the Burnands are buried. Just beyond the gate, on the right, is the grave of Eugène and Julia, united and bound under the branches of a protective tree.

To conclude, my last photographic series is composed of small-format country views of the surrounding area, and two images show the field of the Ploughing in the Jorat (1916).

With my book Fields and my «Champ et hors-champ» exhibition, I was able to gain a better understanding of Eugène Burnand's work and, as if in a mirror effect, ask myself about naturalism, which, in photography, could be likened to social documentary. The representation of reality, with strict respect for what is real, is intimately linked to the emergence of photography as a means of documenting human life and history. However, I've always felt trapped in an overly descriptive and realistic vision of the image. With time, I've finally lightened up and freed myself by adopting a point of view that blends poetry, dreamlike imagery and reality, without betraying the nature of beings and things.

So I didn't cheat Creation. Nor did Eugène Burnand.

Cover image: Photograph by Patrick Gilliéron Lopreno from the art book Fields, published in March of this year and whose review is available in our previous issue (N° 74) © Patrick Gilliéron Lopreno / Olivier Morattel Editeur

Le Regard Libre N° 75