Today we’d like to introduce you to Roland Beaufre.
Hi Roland, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I always have been interested by photography. As a young boy, my godfather came often to visit the family and take beautiful photos of us. My mother put them in a book I liked to look at often, including now. When my father asked me after my Baccalauréat what I wanted to study, i asked for moovie school to become a film director. My father was not enthousiastic , so I asked to the Beaux-arts in Paris. At the same time my sister gave me a camera and I started to do photos of my friends , in black and white, and I develop films and I realized my prints at the Beaux-Arts lab. After 4 years studying art , plastic arts, architecture, drawing at the school, and watch a lot of movies, I had decided to be a photographer. As my father loved Morocco, he bought a house in Tangier and we spent hollidays since I was 11 years old. As I knew everybody and everything, I went to magazines to propose to do a story on Tangier and the houses. One magazine has been interested and we did a lot of stories, which have been published one by one with a lot of success ( nobody knew Tangier in the 80s). It openned the doors of all the prestigious magazines I started to work with : Décoration internationale, the world of interiors, connaissance des arts, New York times magazine, AD …
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I was lucky to start in prestigious magazines , it gave the opportunity to work with magazines all around the world, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, English and American of course. I also started to work on books for different publisher in different countries, when it worked less in magazines, I worked more on books. And it was working less in France, I worked for American magazines and so on… Of course for a moment you are very fashionable so you have a lot of demands, but after a while, new photographers arrive. You are a well known photographer, so not so attractive for some trendy magazines. But now that I am working for more than 40 years, magazines, galleries, publishers are interested by my work.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I started to take portraits as I was studying at the Beaux-Arts, but I started at the begining of my career to work for decoration magazines and that’s how I earned a living: decoration, stilllife and life style. But I did many portraits also, for magzines and I did shows of my portraits in different galleries. I also did shows of nudes photos, and for books or magazines I phtographed scenes of life in different countries. I always have worked on photographing a house like taking a portrait. I am an atmospheric photographer. I like that people looking at I my photo feels the life inside of it. As I have study architecture, I have a special understanding of volumes , and as I saw so many movies, I am a storyteller.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
I am working now more on books than for magazines, even if new magazines like ICON design in Spain or TON in England ask me to work for them. My last 2 books are a kind of monographies. Under the sun, published by Rizzoli, is a world tour in 21 houses I photographed all along my life. And the last one, 27 times Roland Beaufre, is a portrait of me and my work by 27 people , writers, fashion designer, journalist, designers…
I have started to write also, I realized 4 books on Tangier, telling little stories illustrated by photos.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://roland-beaufre.book.fr
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/rolandbeaufre/
