Wedding photographer at the Château des Anglades

Trained as a press photographer, I make wedding reportages, and I approach an estate as a subject to document. At the Anglades, the subject begins at the end of an avenue of palms, in front of an old gate that opens onto the château.

The vineyard was planted in 1852 by the Marquis de Pierrefeu, who created there the first wine estate in the region. The vines still hold the horizon on every side, and the bastide, with its green shutters on stone weathered by a century and a half of sun, stands in the middle, unmoved.

The palm avenue

Century-old palms, and that species changes everything.

These trees carry their crown of fronds very high, so high that at sunset the light passes entirely beneath them, along the trunks, and strikes the gravel of the avenue. A couple walking back up it at the end of the day receive that light head on, warm and unobstructed, where an avenue of plane trees would have dappled it. At the end, the wrought-iron gate, and behind it, the château.

The bastide

Green shutters, a weathered facade, Mediterranean gardens, olive trees in pots on the flowered front steps, string lights hung before the guests arrive.

It is a setting for a couple session, outside in front of the facade, or inside when it rains, in the salons where the patinated leather sofas take the light from the louvred shutters. And sometimes inside without any rain, for the simple pleasure of a sun that comes in blades through the slats.

What does the light do at the end of the day?

It becomes the reason you came.

On this vineyard, the late light creates an atmosphere I have rarely found elsewhere in quite that form. It comes in low between the rows, catches the dust in the air, warms the stone of the bastide, and for thirty or forty minutes the whole estate becomes one continuous source. That is the hour I take the couple into the vines.

Where else does the estate photograph?

Between the rows, on the gravel paths lined with palms, and in front of the gate. Three settings a few minutes apart, each in its own register, and that is how an album finds its breath.

Is it far from everything?

Secluded enough for peace, close enough for convenience. The estate sits away from the usual destination-wedding circuit, and that is what the couples who choose it are looking for.

I have worked here alongside Laure, of Alliance Rêvée, with whom I have collaborated for more than ten years across several estates in the region.

Lawrence Banahan, documentary wedding photographer in Hyères and on the French Riviera. Château des Anglades, Hyères.