Fun & Famous
Expo Erwin Olaf in Paris
Last Wednesday evening, the high society of Paris gathered at the Louvre. Lavish men and richly dressed women sipped champagne while they gazed in fascination at the art on the walls – not by Da Vinci, but by Erwin Olaf. Perhaps a kind of Da Vinci of our time. That champagne was from Ruinart, the photos taken in the cellars of Ruinart. And here's how it goes.
Every year, the oldest champagne house in the world asks an artist to create a project for and about the brand. This year, that honor was given to Erwin Olaf, the man who recently gained even more fame and recognition through his wonderful exhibition for the Rijksmuseum which is now on display. The assignment from Ruinart was simple: create a photo series about our champagne house. So Erwin dragged dozens of models, assistants, and other crew members to Reims, where the 8-kilometer-long cellars are located, where all the bottles wait until they are ready for sale.
Olaf always works with ‘living objects’. In other words, models. His photos are grandly staged scenes that depict a fabulous dream world, with dozens of people working behind the scenes. But once he arrived in the impressively imposing cellars that are up to 30 meters deep in the ground, his idea didn't work. He became extremely frustrated, couldn't get the images as he had them in his head, and to blow off steam, he went for a walk through the cellars. He said he was quite depressed at that point because what he wanted wasn't happening.
And as he wandered around, his eye fell on the hundreds of small drawings that have been scratched and drawn into the wall over the past hundreds of years. Names, little figures, shapes, and many cobwebs and dust webs that have spread over the bottles and shelves. And then he realized: “I'm not going big, I'm going small.” Instead of grand and sweeping, it became small and penetrating.
The crew and models were sent home, and he came to the cellars a total of 7 times, with one assistant and only the light from his own camera. He looked and looked, took thousands of photos, and the result is as special as it is clever. They are fragments capturing the history in the cellar – a cobweb over a box of bottles, a mold that has taken on a special pattern, a crate with glass shards, crazy drawings on the walls. All very close, shot in black and white, and with a clarity and sharpness that makes you almost not believe they are flat photos, so much depth is in them.
As we walk through the cellars with Erwin, he keeps discovering a new drawing and then exclaims delightedly, “That wasn't there last time! It keeps changing here!” Of course, Ruinart was a little nervous about this big shift in imagery, but they gave him complete freedom and all the trust he needed. When asked if perhaps at least one photo of a Ruinart bottle could be taken, he shot the photo of the broken bottles, a joke, but still a photo that made the final selection.
It was the first time in his career that he didn't work with models, and as I see him walking through the cellars as if it were his home, I get the impression that he particularly enjoyed it. He is cheerful and upbeat, constantly making jokes and pointing out and telling stories.
Afterwards, we drink down a glass of champagne and he speeds off in a Maserati to the TEFAF in Maastricht. The photo series will be on display in Paris until this weekend and then travels around the world, from exhibition to exhibition. Cheers Erwin, to you.
