About The Bee Photographer
The Photographic Vision of Eric Tourneret
Eric Tourneret has traveled the world, training his accomplished eye on images from interiors to honey bees. His skill has long been on view in French magazines, such as Figaro Magazine, Paris Match, VSD, Terre Sauvage, GEO, Point de vue, Femme actuelle, that have sent him in pursuit of visual stories.
His startlingly original images, the products of a unique aesthetic honed by technical expertise, tell compelling tales that can now be found in two books. Tourneret loves to work in the wild, and 25 years of venturing through the outbacks of most continents have brought him an immediate sense of the preciousness of the environment. Home in France, he discovered the failure of a prime link between nature and man, the honey bee. He turned to photographing the bees and their keepers intimately and passionately - a subject that has absorbed him for over eight years. Excruciatingly patient labor (one shot took a week and 4,500 shutter releases) produced the exquisite photo book Le peuple des abeilles (The People of the Bees, Rustica, 2007).
His book Cueilleurs de miel (The Honey Gatherers, Rustica, 2009), widens the theme to man's global relationship with the bee - primitive honey hunting tradition in Nepal, industrial pollination in the U.S., and urban beekeeping on the roof of the Paris opera. While large format photos from the books continue to be exhibited throughout France, Tourneret has turned his fascination to television documentary as well as film.
The photographer who showed us bees gathered at a pond like wild animals around an African water hole, who showed us pollen-laden returning foragers from inside the hive, who showed us bees pummeling a honey hunter suspended over a cliff on ropes - that photographer is preparing to widen our eyes yet again.
# Mea Mac Neil American Bee journal
Eric Tourneret has traveled the world, training his accomplished eye on images from interiors to honey bees. His skill has long been on view in French magazines, such as Figaro Magazine, Paris Match, VSD, Terre Sauvage, GEO, Point de vue, Femme actuelle, that have sent him in pursuit of visual stories.
His startlingly original images, the products of a unique aesthetic honed by technical expertise, tell compelling tales that can now be found in two books. Tourneret loves to work in the wild, and 25 years of venturing through the outbacks of most continents have brought him an immediate sense of the preciousness of the environment. Home in France, he discovered the failure of a prime link between nature and man, the honey bee. He turned to photographing the bees and their keepers intimately and passionately - a subject that has absorbed him for over eight years. Excruciatingly patient labor (one shot took a week and 4,500 shutter releases) produced the exquisite photo book Le peuple des abeilles (The People of the Bees, Rustica, 2007).
His book Cueilleurs de miel (The Honey Gatherers, Rustica, 2009), widens the theme to man's global relationship with the bee - primitive honey hunting tradition in Nepal, industrial pollination in the U.S., and urban beekeeping on the roof of the Paris opera. While large format photos from the books continue to be exhibited throughout France, Tourneret has turned his fascination to television documentary as well as film.
The photographer who showed us bees gathered at a pond like wild animals around an African water hole, who showed us pollen-laden returning foragers from inside the hive, who showed us bees pummeling a honey hunter suspended over a cliff on ropes - that photographer is preparing to widen our eyes yet again.
# Mea Mac Neil American Bee journal