Shaping light

At Palazzetto Bru Zane, during the Biennale season, Fondation Bru presents an unprecedented photography project devoted to the art of printing. At its centre are Roland Dufau, master printer known as the “Sculptor of Light,” and the legendary photographer Reza, invited as curator. On view from May 23 to September 12, the exhibition reveals photography not as image alone, but as material, gesture, and human collaboration. Over nearly four decades, Dufau has produced prints for more than 220 photographers using the rare Swiss Cibachrome process, amassing a private collection of over 1,000 pieces. From this archive, Reza selected fifty photographs that testify both to photographic history and to the invisible craftsmanship that brings images fully into being. We met in advance with Michèle Roche (Fondation Bru), Roland Dufau, and Reza.

Foundations & Photography
Michèle Roche_Fondation Bru’s projects always stem from the passions of its founders, Jean and Nicole Bru. Photography was one of them, not as casual practice, but as a deeply lived experience. During their travels, they photographed intensely, each with their own eye, even comparing images afterward. For them, printing was a ritual, a moment of truth for the image. That passion remains visible today in our archives: negatives, slides, cameras – many Leicas – cine equipment. It reflects a way of living photography rooted in curiosity, precision, and pleasure. Developing exhibitions through photography therefore felt inevitable, especially in Venice: a city of passage, music, and vision. Hosting photography during the Biennale was a natural extension.

Early Commitments
Michèle Roche_Our first major photography project dates back to 2008, when we began working with the Fondation Gilles Caron. It led to the creation of a scrapbook and, in 2013, to a far more ambitious endeavour: producing colour prints from sixty original slides. It was technically complex. The materials were already disappearing. This is when I met Roland Dufau. His work was a revelation: not just technically extraordinary, but capable of restoring fragile, time‑marked images through a slow, patient, deeply creative process. I realized then that printing is not a mechanical step, but an interpretive act, a second writing of the image.

The Invisible Craft
Michèle Roche_Printing is often unseen, yet essential. Roland doesn’t simply print images, he reveals them, sometimes reconstructs them. Working from slides, he shapes colour, light, material. Some prints required dozens of attempts. Cibachrome offered exceptional chromatic precision and durability, but beyond technique there is the human dimension: each print is a dialogue, a collaboration with the photographer.

An Exhibition Takes Shape
Michèle Roche_After our work on Gilles Caron, I learned Roland owned around 1,200 prints by the world’s leading photographers. The idea emerged to build an exhibition around the images he had printed, curated by a photographer, hence Reza’s involvement. The goal was to bring different visions together. He ultimately selected around fifty works. The first criterion was print quality: to show the expressive power of Cibachrome and Roland’s craft. We also wanted to represent major photographers (Lucien Clergue, Jean‑Claude Sauer, Jacques Henri Lartigue) and diverse fields, from reportage to fashion and advertising. Many prints were gifts from photographers in exchange for Roland’s work. The collection tells both a history of photography and a deeply human story.

A Life of Printing
Roland Dufau_My work is passion and craftsmanship. For 37 years I worked alone, by hand, in the dark, sometimes hours on a single image. Using black‑and‑white masks, I controlled extreme contrasts with millimetric precision, revealing detail in shadows while protecting highlights in ways lenses of the time couldn’t. Slides traditionally produced black borders, so I invented a manual system, that is: working in total darkness with weights and cut cardboard, to create white borders. This allowed photographers to sign colour prints as they did black‑and‑white ones, elevating colour prints to collectable works. Cibachrome was unique: extraordinary colour fidelity and, thanks to azo dyes embedded in the paper, a lifespan of up to 300 years under optimal conditions. The image seems trapped in ice: pure, transparent. Exposure times ranged from seconds to fifteen minutes, with manual colour intervention. Every print was unique. My goal was simple: that the photographer would say, “Yes, that’s exactly how it was.” Today the technique is legendary because it no longer exists. The paper and chemicals are gone. What remains are irreplaceable archival prints.

Beginnings
Roland Dufau_Almost by accident. A lab had ruined the colours of an industrial shoot: steaks that should have been red turned brown. I decided to reprint them myself using a Cibachrome kit. The result was excellent. Word spread. Commissions followed. Eventually I had waiting lists of six months, even years. I transformed printing into pure craftsmanship, often working alone for hours under the enlarger, shaping light with my hands (the “make‑up” technique) to achieve results no industrial process could deliver.

Trust & Collaboration
Roland Dufau_Total trust. My Paris studio became a global reference. I worked with Lucien Clergue for over thirty years. He trusted me so deeply he’d take boxes of prints straight to New York without checking them. At first, we learned each other’s language; then it became constant dialogue. I would sometimes show two versions: the slide and the print. Photographers discovered details they hadn’t noticed. Louis Stettner once told me that without meeting me, he would have abandoned colour photography entirely. I was the only one who could give him the colours he wanted.

The “Magician of Light”
Reza_I call Roland the Magician of Light. We photographers have vision, visual memory, but lenses and film never fully translate what we see. He could. He read our eyes, sometimes understood our intent better than we did.

Photography as testimony
Reza_My language is giving voice to the voiceless: conflict zones, forgotten people. Art must serve humanity. I could pursue commercial photography, but I choose the field, even risking my life, because images can testify, awaken, transform.

An iconic image
Reza_It took me two years to meet Ahmad Shah Massoud. He was the most wanted man in the world. We met in a cave, under bombardment, in Afghanistan. That’s where I took the photograph: while he was lost in thought. We spoke for hours. He predicted the Soviet Union would collapse within five years after its defeat in Afghanistan. Yet his personal dream was simple: to become a schoolteacher in his village. That image holds everything: strength, fragility, humanity.

The Meaning of the Exhibition
Reza_Joy, despite everything. Positive energy. In a world scarred by violence and uncertainty, these images remind us of beauty, precision, and the depth of the human gaze. They honour a vanished craft: the printer, the artisan in the shadows who gives photography its full existence. What Fondation Bru supports here is not just an exhibition, but the safeguarding of an endangered art.

Featured image: Roland Dufau et Reza, Chambre noire avec la machine pour le Cibachrome