The first time I met François Halard, more than a decade ago, he had come to New Orleans to photograph the house I was then living in for Vogue. When I opened the gate for this rather shy Frenchman in horn-rims, he gasped. Turning around, I realized why: The two-story former slave quarters was almost entirely obscured by tropical plants and blooming vines. But Halard immediately had a solution. We’ll just shoot at night, he said, explaining that the interior lights would give the structure definition.
Now, looking at his breathtaking new monograph, François Halard (Rizzoli), it is clear he would never have told me to cut back the banana trees. His romantic eye is drawn to organized chaos, quirky collections, and evidence of lives well lived. Even a house as grand as Chatsworth, the Duchess of Devonshire’s family seat, is made accessible through Halard’s lens. A photograph of the Yellow Drawing Room, with its enormous John Singer Sargent painting, is followed by Halard’s portrait of the dowager duchess herself, pictured with baskets of eggs from her prizewinning chickens.
There’s also an image from Chatsworth of a writing table piled high with papers. This is quintessential Halard. He celebrates bulletin boards, work studios, and seemingly mundane objects that inspire the pantheon of aristocrats, artists, and designers he documents. We see Cy Twombly in Gaeta, Italy; Robert Rauschenberg on Captiva Island in Florida; Albert Frey in Palm Springs; Richard Avedon in the Hamptons. The portraits are worthy of Halard’s lofty subjects, but his shots of their homes are equally evocative.
That’s because Halard is clearly in love with interiors. The pictures of his own refuge in Arles, France, are among the most beautiful in the book. In keeping with the dreamlike quality of the images, there are no captions, just a few short paragraphs of Halard’s memories from each shoot. These add even more poetry to his already magnificent ode to some of the most inspiring residences of our time.
Click to read a Q+A with Halard about his new book.
