Wedding photographer at the Carlton Cannes
I am a documentary photographer, and I photograph weddings. Some places carry a story before the day has even begun, and the Carlton is one of them: here, the architecture speaks first.
Charles Dalmas designed it in 1911 for Henri Ruhl, and the cream facade with its two cupolas has been a listed monument since 1989. Grace Kelly met Prince Rainier here during the 1955 festival, and the hotel stepped that day into a legend it has been tending ever since. A century after it opened, the palace gave itself seven years of restoration under Tristan Auer, who returned its marble and its ceiling heights. It reopened in March 2023.
I plan my framing around the graphic lines of a place and around its light. I document a venue, I take charge of it, and that is how I approach this one.
The Grand Salon
The Belle Époque room on the ground floor came through the restoration untouched, with its original volumes and its Murano chandeliers. Dinner and dancing happen here.
The light comes from those chandeliers and the wall sconces, and from nothing else. It was designed to be seen, and photographing it asks for something more. I compose my own light in this room, as I do in any reception space: off-camera flashes placed around the salon, triggered remotely. The ISO stays low, the grain stays fine, the colours stay true, and ceilings this high let an added light source behave exactly as you want it to.
The suites and the bay
The suites open onto the sea, and the morning preparations find a light that few rooms can offer: lateral, bounced off the water, without the hardness of a direct source. A dress hanging in front of the window, a robe thrown over an armchair, everything takes on a depth that arrives on its own.
The balcony looks down on the Croisette. A bride stepping out onto it with the bay behind her is an image the hotel has been offering for a century, and it takes a few seconds to catch.
The staircases
The interior staircases give height and a geometry the eye follows by itself. A couple who pause there make a picture, and I choose the moment when the other guests, who use these same steps, have left the frame clear.
The beach and the pontoon
Both can be privatised, together or separately, depending on what the couple has arranged with the hotel. That perimeter decides what gets photographed in the late afternoon, when the light drops onto the bay.
The terraces and the Croisette
The hotel continues outdoors. The terraces, the gardens in front of the facade and the Croisette itself with its palms are as much a part of its image as the salons. A couple session finds three settings within a few steps, and the boulevard, public as it is, becomes the palace's own backdrop the moment you frame it from the front steps.
Cannes on a wedding day
Organising your images means staying independent of the city's constraints, and Cannes has plenty. Parking in the centre is an ordeal, and the underground car parks remain the safest option. During the major trade fairs and during the film festival, the city closes in on itself, and a twelve-minute drive takes forty.
Those weeks, everything gets anticipated. Light is lost quickly in a traffic jam, so you know the schedules, you calculate the routes, and you arrive where you need to be before it changes. That anticipation is what separates a reportage you endure from a reportage you master.
I have photographed several weddings here, on my own or with Julien, who films alongside me.
Lawrence Banahan, documentary wedding photographer in Cannes and on the French Riviera. Carlton Cannes, 58 boulevard de la Croisette.