Masters old and new
The Swiss luxury skincare brand La Prairie is also famous for its support to the fields of art and culture. It recently commissioned the photographer Douglas Mandry to capture the beauty of Switzerland’s natural landscapes through a series of images that he calls Boundary Crossing.
Mandry, who hails from the city of Geneva, wields his camera as a means of questioning the reality of memory, technology and nature. He uses his photographs as a base for his art, then reworks, manipulates and combines them with other elements, thereby creating objects within a different typology that lies somewhere between the flat and the threedimensional.
The photographer began work on Boundary Crossing by travelling around the country and taking still images of its mountains, forests, rivers and other natural features. “After hours of walking,” he says, “sometimes I just happen to be at a place that strikes me. Capturing this nature is for me a testimony of its sublime essence. Afterwards, I try to reappropriate this untouched and unspoiled environment and make it my own. So, the whole process is about merging my experience of nature with my cultural background.”
After taking the photographs, he isolated various shapes and abstractions in the orginals that he wanted to retain and then, using other techniques and media such as painting and airbrushing, began to subvert and transform the surrounding elements in ways that appear to suggest the passage of time. Once the eventual images are displayed as a series, they have the effect of taking viewers on a fantastical and
surreal journey in which dreams are blended with reality.
Mandry’s approach naturally resonates with La Prairie’s own endeavours to subvert time, while tirelessly pursuing the ideal of timeless beauty. It’s a pursuit that’s evidenced by La Prairie’s own patronage of global art fairs, as well as its support for research into conservation, so that works of historic importance can be better preserved for the future.
In the words of Greg Prodromides, La Prairie’s chief marketing officer, “Contemporary art is the prism through which we express our heritage and values, and allows us to enrich our own story. As part of our ongoing relationship with art, we engage in creative dialogues with artists who bring their own perspective and artistic vocabulary to our brand. Indeed, artists are our storytellers.
“With this new initiative, we’re extremely proud to be able — for the first time — to fuse our artistic engagement with our purpose as a Swiss luxury brand, committed to preserving the nature of our House’s origins.”