Awarded
Erwan Frotin
Photo research 'Menu de Printemps'
Photography
Erwan Frotin
'Menu de Printemps', a series of seven colour photographies
© BAK / Erwan Frotin
Erwan Frotin in his studio
© BAK / Körner Union, LausanneErwan Frotin
Jury report
Sculptural titbits
How to present choice ingredients for a lavish meal? The photographer Erwan Frotin, who works in Lausanne and Paris, was commissioned by a London restaurant to take a series of colour photographs for an exclusive publication. The photographer drew his inspiration from the 'Sketch' restaurant's chef Pierre Gagnaire. Gagnaire is known for his daring combinations of very different foodstuffs. Erwan Frotin has now made a masterly arrangement of something highly unusual in a total of eleven delicious tableaux: he was not interested in illustrating a menu directly, but took his lead from the foods and the menu sequence of classical French cuisine. So we see all sorts of exquisite titbits, as used for hors d'oeuvres, main course and dessert.
Erwan Frotin's thought-provoking and yet very precise arrangements are also on show in this work. He has already received an award for them in the Swiss National Design Competition, two years ago. Things that are actually quite familiar are presented in an unusual way: slices of bread are transformed into mountain ranges that seem to have fungi growing on them. Seductive, earthy truffle tubers are photographed with very white eggs, eerily black sea-urchins with a lemon to provide colour contrast. A decoratively arranged partridge seems to be wearing a salad dotted with yellow and red in its open wings, cheeses tower up against the laws of gravity, the pistachio ice-cream is made into a dramatic summit. Frotin shows a sense of refined sculptural arrangements and appealing colour-contrasts, with a slightly surreal touch, and in such abundance that you start asking yourself: isn't this too much? Won't we lose our appetite? And these photographs inevitably conjure up lavish 17 th century Dutch still lives. Here too abundance shifted into super-abundance, and extravagant enjoyment always carried a reminder of the transience of all earthly delights.
Peter Stohler
Biography
Erwan Frotin
Born in
1978
Education
Fotografie
also in
