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For 250 years, Veuve Clicquot has shone its Solaire culture around the world, inspired by the profound optimism of Madame Clicquot herself and expressed through its iconic yellow - the colour of the sun.
Today, Veuve Clicquot’s cultural imprint finds new expression, in association with the legendary Magnum Photos agency. Together, they announce Emotions of the Sun, a touring photographic celebration of the Sun. Eight photographers present their responses to the same brief: a creative carte blanche to convey the emotions inspired in them by the Sun.
Working simultaneously, across five continents, the photographers deliver their individual interpretations in 40 new photographs, each an illustration of the Sun’s power.
©️ Trent Parke | Magnum Photos
Photography is a collaboration between an artist and the light – in particular the Sun, that inexhaustible source of inspiration. An ally, whose golden glow sublimates the loveliest landscape and enhances the beauty of a chosen subject. The Sun offers photographers a wealth of emotions to capture and convey.
In eight different countries, the photographers deliver one or more moments in response to this solar theme, across an extraordinary spectrum of emotions, shapes and colours, from vast outdoor spaces to intimate interiors.
For the inaugural launch of Emotions of the Sun touring exhibition, Veuve Clicquot stops in Italy during Milan Design Week, taking place at the Garden Senato Milano, from April 15th to 21st.
Emotions of the Sun is presented in collaboration with independent curator and photographic historian Pauline Vermare, featuring 40 prints created by the eight photographers.
The exhibition is complemented by an exceptional tasting menu on the theme of the Sun in your plate at a Clicquot café. Signature dishes will be served all day, paired with selected cuvées from Veuve Clicquot.
“The Land of the Rising Sun,” as Japan is commonly known in the West, is represented with a bright red sun sitting at the heart of its flag.
McCurry’s series, featuring both Fuji and the majestic Sun over the cycle of a single day, is reminiscent of the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (1830) by the influential Japanese ukiyo-e artist Hokusai, which depicted the volcano from various perspectives and in all weathers, through the seasons.
McCurry’s choreographed images include a human presence in each landscape, a humble witness of nature’s unparalleled beauty, symbolizing a profound harmony. Shining bright, the sun stands as the source of all life.
In Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, De Middel created a phantasmagorical universe symbolizing the Sun and the emotional impact of sunlight.
Amidst sand dunes and expanses of water, drawing on strong lighting, metaphorical shapes and bright colors, she created a theater of life, exuding warmth and abundance.
Through her whimsical, imaginative lens, De Middel creates images that delicately and poetically convey feelings of joy, fulfillment, and freedom. In the presence of her epic tableaux, the viewer feels an overwhelming sense of plenitude and contentment: a lightness of being.
These mesmerizing portraits of the Sun were shot in Parke’s hometown of Adelaide, during the Australian summer. For this series, Parke chose to merge two great forces of nature: the ocean and the sun, both of which he describes as “symbols of universal energy”.
Capturing the Sun at its most impressive, setting towards the horizon, Parke created mesmerizing monumental photographs of the symbiosis between humankind and nature.
Against the sun’s fiery rays, impressive silhouettes make striking photographic motifs. The ocean becomes a sumptuous canvas. In a spirit of deep mindfulness, these photographs exude happiness, peace and serenity.
When prompted to produce a body of work on the Sun, Alex Webb immediately thought of Oaxaca, Mexico, a city that is very close to his heart. Beyond its remarkable beauty, Webb explains that the place also carries a distinctive cultural legacy: the mythology of the Mixtecs, one of the many indigenous peoples of Oaxaca, much of which centred around an acute consciousness of the Sun.
Inspired by the city’s architecture and everyday scenes, Webb created a series filled with solar symbols. The colors, light and energy of the place and passers-by alike, allowed him to create multi-layered compositions, theatrical scenes that are filled with solar energy, rich and golden light, and extraordinary, bold colors.
His photographs capture the mood and atmosphere created by the colors themselves, each filled with their own emotional component: happiness, excitement, and, sometimes, mystery.
Nanna Heitmann chose to photograph the otherworldly desert of the Bardenas Reales, in Spain. To conjure the right mood and emotions, she chose to work in low, slanting sunlight, when the desert turns a softer shade of yellow.
Using a length of orange fabric, she symbolized the warm sun rays that connect us to one another and give energy and life. Her pictures convey a feeling of contemplation and connection to something greater than ourselves. In these theatrical mises-en-scène, human beings and the sun are in perfect osmosis: in the vastness of our world, they are one
This series conveys a sense of calm, awe, and introspection, inviting viewers to immerse themselves in the beauty of nature, and to find moments of stillness and appreciation amidst the chaos of life.
Olivia Arthur’s photographs were made in rural France during the last days of summer. They evoke inner peace, simple joys, and the poetry of childhood memories.
Her photographs were inspired by the saying "Make Hay While the Sun Shines”: to bring the Sun inside, and make the most of every favorable opportunity.
Arthur chose hay and straw bales as a starting point to showcase the positive energy that everyone feels with after a summer of sun, a time when people interact with nature more than any other season.
Sobekwa worked in his native country, South Africa, where he was inspired to shoot during the Spring, a time that, in his own words, is “like sunrise: a time when everything starts to live again, to flourish, a period full of joy.” His delicate photographs bear witness to the deep and spontaneous bond that unites humans with nature.
The series makes palpable the gentle caress of the spring sun, and the sheer energy of nature. Sobekwa’s warm and graceful images, full of light and vibrancy, are, as he explains, “a reflection of what we see with our human eye”.
With this series, Newsha Tavakolian invites us to experience a sunny day in her native Iran. Through the visual fable based on the emotional power of the sun, Tavakolian explains that she wanted to tell a story of female power, hopefulness, and new beginnings.
She was inspired by a book titled Conversation in a Garden by Iranian writer Shahrokh Meskoob, in which two intellectuals discuss Persian gardens, concluding that “the garden is inside you.”
In this same enlightened spirit, Tavakolian’s soulful vision of the Sun as a soothing and nurturing presence makes us realize that its warmth and light are, indeed, inside each and every one of us.
