Francois Halard: Art & Flowers

The master photographer’s compelling images of his two most intimate passions: art and flowers. “His photography has an innate capacity to evoke emotion and tell stories that linger in the mind long after the image is seen;” writes Dries Van Noten in the foreword to this two-volume series of images. Long revered for his personal photography of the world’s most celebrated buildings and interiors, Halard strikes a new path with two new bodies of work. Confined to his house in Arles after a shoulder injury in early 2024, Halard began photographing the objects immediately surrounding him with his Polaroid camera. In turns traditional and abstract, the Flowers series is a captivating exploration of nature’s beauty. As beautifully described by fashion designer Dries Van Noten, “The Polaroid captures a fleeting moment, blossoming into a lasting memory, while the real flower, vibrant and alive, ultimately withers away, reminding us that beauty can be both preserved and ephemeral.” In the second series, Art, Halard has enlarged a select number of his Polaroids, which he then worked on top with paint, wax, and other materials to give the final results a strong, layered sense of history and memory. Many of the images are made of ancient statuaries or details of Renaissance paintings from Italy and Greece—the tight crop of a marble head, or the folds of 15th-century drapery. “I am delving into the idea that antiquity can be modern;” Halard states in his interview with art curator Bice Curiger, “I like to start with a specific object to turn it into another, transitory object.” Halard’s transformation of the ephemeral into the permanent, in the case of his flowers; and the permanent into the ephemeral, in the case of his Classical-inspired artworks—give power and beauty to these compelling images.