CARTE BLANCHE, photo gallery
The Gallery itself on Valencia is now closed, but Carte Blanche is going on online. Stay connected!
We had met Gwen, the gallery's founder, when it had just opened on Valencia.
A great project with beautiful and affordable pictures.
Gwen has invited LostinSF in her gallery.
Gwen has always been fascinated by images. She started her career in advertising, where she enjoyed working with photographers. That was her first connection with those artists.
Since then, photography has become a hobby and a passion.
With her husband and her camera, she travels around the world. It was her first hands-on step in photography. A friend and photographer joins them in India and transmits his knowledge and passion to her.
Back to France (where she's from), her passion keeps growing. She discovers talented yet unknown photographers, who deserve to be included in the restricted circle of artists.
She would love to buy photo prints but realizes, like most people, that her budget is too limited for what galleries offer.
This is how Gwen's project started, based on the concept of “making photography accessible to a majority of people”.
An affordable photography gallery was born in San Francisco.
Gwen selects the artists she represents on several criteria. First of all, the pictures have to be part of an artistic project, or tell us a story. It's not just about a nice picture, it also has to carry a message. Then, as an artist, the selected photographers have an innovative (or a least different) point of view on the subject. The “eye” is more important than the technique itself. Last but not least, the picture has to create an emotion.
To be considered affordable, the artists have to accept to get into the gallery format of prints and price ($79 - $1850). Most of the photographers have already been acknowledged by local galleries and/or awarded in photography contests, but are not famous (yet).
They will soon be thanks to Gallery Carte Blanche.
Carte Blanche Gallery
Photos: Gwen Lafage gives "Carte Blanche" to Lukasz Biederman.
