Wedding photographer at the Domaine des Gueules Cassées
I photograph a wedding the way you cover an event: present, discreet, attentive to what happens. The Domaine des Gueules Cassées holds me with its palette. The ochre of the stone, the green of the park, and enough of both for a single day to give images in two opposite registers.
It is a large park of pines and gardens at La Valette-du-Var, between the sea and the hills, a few minutes from Toulon. A chapel stands in it, an avenue of orange trees crosses it, and terraces extend it towards the west.
Hard shadow and golden hour
The estate lets you work both ways, and that choice sums up the page.
In the middle of the day, the sun falls straight onto the ochre stone and cuts shadows with clean edges. Taken for what they are, they give graphic images, made of lines and contrasts, for couples who want something with an edge.
At the end of the day, the light settles on the orange tree avenue and does the exact opposite. It softens, warms what it touches, and the avenue becomes the gentlest setting on the estate. Most reportages here pass through both, a few hours apart.
The orange tree avenue
An avenue works by depth, as opposed to a simple backdrop. It flatters two people walking and does little for thirty people posing. The estate steers couples towards it with good reason, provided you take it at the hour it was made for.
The chapel
A religious ceremony and a reception in the same place: that is what the chapel makes possible. It is also the hour that asks the most of me, for three reasons that arrive together.
There is little light, because it is a chapel and it was built for contemplation. There is little room, and that becomes a real subject once the guest list grows: a full chapel leaves barely enough space to put a foot down. And the placement belongs to the officiant, each with their own requirements, some allowing movement during the readings, others assigning a single spot from start to finish.
So the work is done before anyone sits down. I ask, I take the place I am given, and I make it work, as opposed to a negotiation carried on during the ceremony.
What does the park allow?
Different settings for different moments, without leaving the estate. A civil ceremony in the garden, a cocktail hour beneath the trees, the reception indoors. Guests spread out instead of crowding together, and a reportage of a dispersed crowd breathes.
The terraces facing the sunset
They look west and south-west, and take the last light of the day head on.
Dinner and the evening are held in rooms edged by those terraces, and the refreshments are served outside. When the light drops, it lands straight on the guests, warm and low, at the exact hour when everyone is holding a glass and has forgotten the camera. It is the softest half hour of the day. Earlier in the afternoon, those same terraces bake, and everyone heads for the park.
When night falls, I create my light with off-camera flashes, to keep faces their fineness and colours their truth.
Is it far from Toulon?
A few minutes. Guests get there easily and feel far from the city, which is all you ask of an estate set on its edge.
Lawrence Banahan, documentary wedding photographer in Toulon and on the French Riviera. Domaine des Gueules Cassées, La Valette-du-Var.