While Fujifilm is setting up shop in Arles during the opening week of the Rencontres de la Photographie with its Fujikina event, The Eye of Photography met three of its ambassadors: Mathias Benguigui, Laura Bonnefous and Julien Apruzzese. The opportunity to return to their collaboration with the Japanese manufacturer and to discuss their activities during this Arlesian week.
Fujifilm ambassador for almost ten years, Julien Apruzzese claims to have forged a strong bond with them: “These are the same people who have been following me since the beginning. I have been a photographer for 11 years, my first camera was a Fujifilm and I have never touched anything else. They have seen me evolve.”. Advertising photographer, he runs a cr studioeation of’image for brands and artists. Fujifilm participates in all of his projects and regularly offers him the chance to try out new equipment. “Our relationship is not exclusively based on the’Financially, they support me enormously and accompany me in each of my projects. If I have gotten to where I am today, it is also thanks to them.
At Fujikina, Julien Apruzzese will realize a master class during which he will create several images to ultimately constitute a triptych series. The public will be able to see the shooting of each photograph and, the next day, its post-production: a figurative portrait (Monday), an abstract portrait (Wednesday) and a still life (Friday).
Photographer, publisher and exhibition curator, Mathias Benguigui observes the world through the prism of a documentary practice for which he advocates a resolutely subjective approach. His book The Songs of the’AsphodAndthe (The Beak in the’air, 2021) published with Agathe Kalfas, responded to a desire to “put into perspective the different layers of migration on the island of Lesbos” through a story mixing text and images. Mathias Benguigui has been a Fujifilm ambassador since 2020. When he photographs his project Delta bleu as part of the BnF’s Major Order, which he then continued with Black Swampit is the GFX 50sII camera that he uses. This medium format gives him the freedom of a wide variety of approaches: « Cand that j’love with digital c’is that it allows’having several different films in the same camera. For example, for the BnF, I did something with very worked colors while Black Swamp was in black and white, with a lot of grain. All this with the same camera. It is also an ideal tool for his press portraits, which gives his eyes a quality close to that of film.
For Fujikina, Mathias Benguigui will lead three workshops: two Photo Walks in the streets of Arles to understand improvisation in portraiture by reading the environment and the light as well as a Fujfilm Workshop in collaboration with the Rencontres d’Arles entitled “Producing and disseminating your personal gaze”, on how to approach one’s personal ambition as an author and to think about a project over time to better construct it. He will also offer a conference on the importance of the subjective gaze in documentary and information photography.
Laura Bonnefous is ambassador Fujifilm for three years now, with whom she evokes a very family atmosphere. The photographer leads both an author’s practice, at the frontierre between the documentary and the’plastic image, and a more commercial activity for fashion and advertising. She takes her shots with the GFX Fujifilm 100S, a medium format “very suited” to her practice and whose body she appreciates.
Portfolio reading, workshop, photo walk and conference: Laure Bonnefous will be very active during Fujikina. For her Fujifilm Workshop in collaboration with the Rencontres d’Arles, “Between landscape and portrait, color as a fragile link”, she emmAndwill bring participants to the city for a photoshoot session on the banks of the Rhone, between portrait and landscape. His workshop with Fujifilm will be more theoretical and will focus on how to develop a personal project, from the birth of the’idea to sa concretization, as well as how to show it. She will also lead a Photo Walk and a conference, for which she invited Sylvie Lecallier, curator at the Palais Galliera, to discuss the link to clothing in contemporary photography.
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