It is in her small workshop-laboratory located on the edge of the pond that the magic happens and Fanette Bruel’s cyanotypes come to life. The photographer has been living in this little paradise for seven years, from where she immortalizes “the simple beauty of the world, rediscovers its poetry and reconnects with our environment naturally.”
Fanette Bruel’s photos will make you see life and nature in blue. The world of the artisan photographer, a graduate of the Saint-Luc School of Arts in Belgium, is fascinating to say the least, as is the technique she uses: the cyanotype.
“It’s one of the very first photographic processes dating back to 1840,” recalls the woman who, in today’s digital age, has chosen to travel back in time. However, she does not deny modernity, she uses it. However, it gives flesh to the virtual, it makes it material, gives it life, a real artistic existence. And this blue color, cyan precisely, is unlike any other and linked to the reaction of iron salt to light.
When sunlight writes on paper
Fanette Bruel writes with light, which is the original meaning of the word photography. “We start with a paper which is blank, which is white, on which we apply the photosensitive product. I then place my negative on the paper, then I put it in the sun. Then we go to the lab, we reveal and ‘we fix’explains Fanette Bruel.
If digital is never far away, it’s because she works, basically, using a quality digital camera. It uses the positive originals which it inverts. “I could work with old images, on glass plates, but I favor digital, because it is rich in potential”she said.
Renew materialized contact with the photo
She, who initially responded to orders, moved from useful photography to art photography, quite naturally. “Little by little, what I missed was the work in the lab, because I had been trained in film. Little by little, I returned to old processes. And that was the trigger , it was my arrival here, in the South When I settled in Bages, the landscapes particularly attracted me and I wanted to do work on that.explains the photographer.
Beyond the high quality of its photos, the technical aspect is significant. It is essential to give artistic value to the prints. It is based on know-how in terms of exposure and framing but also on the choice of papers to play on colors and contrasts.
Objectively, Fanette Bruel’s cyanotypes are worth discovering. And once this is done, the desire to practice this technique will come naturally, like an irrepressible desire to write with light and to reconnect with photography.
Exhibitions, a workshop and introductory courses
From Thursday, November 28 to Sunday, December 1, Fanette Bruel will participate in FRAGMENTS, the regional crafts fair at the Hôtel-Dieu in Toulouse. There will be 80 craftsmen representing the wealth of artistic crafts in Occitania.
From December 6 to 22, she will exhibit at the Maison des arts in Bages.
In 2025, she will set up individual 2.5 hour workshops in her lab (registration required). It also has two partnerships for collective workshops, with the Narbo Via museum (discovery of cyanotype) and the Côte du Midi tourist office (visit to Bages combined with a cyanotype workshop). Finally, she will give free workshops for migrants (with the 100 pour 1 roof association in Narbonne), convinced that “creating beautiful works nourishes the soul and that is essential when we are going through very difficult things”.
To find out more, discover her, meet her, visit her on social networks or on her website https://fanettebruel.com/
You can also discover his artistic photographer’s lab at 35, avenue Jean-Moulin in Bages. Contact: 06 52 61 36 28.
