Picto Foundation is a partner of the 17th edition of the Photographic Walks which will take place from July 3 to August 30 in Vendôme and in many surrounding towns. On the program, 31 exhibitions are offered to visitors, around the theme of Mimesis Imagination*, Reality-Materiality. Picto is also committed to education by supporting Campus International, a residency dedicated to students from international schools and by partnering with the Mark Grosset Prize which rewards young photography students each year.

It was with satisfaction in 2020 that we were able to open the exhibitions spread across the Vendôme region.
We offered artists a space to display their works.
Attendance at exhibitions, up 8%, demonstrated, if necessary, how important it is to maintain access to culture in the dark times we have been through. There are always lessons to be learned from the difficulties we may face. 2020 will have been a year of teaching and adaptation to an unprecedented situation, but it was a great summer in Vendôme!
This teaching results in the new course of the festival with some modifications regarding the temporality of the events. We are keeping the exhibitions open to the public on July 3 and we will meet to celebrate photographers from July 29 until August 1.
The festive days will begin on Thursday morning in Blois, then continue in the Collines du Perche.
From Friday morning, meet at Meslay then at Vendôme, from Friday evening until Sunday noon. This is the second part of “CONVERGENCE”. For this 17th edition, there are 31 exhibitions that you will discover. It is a question here of fictional or real stories, of tenderness, of desire, or of the harsh reality of life through events that personally affect the authors.
What do the artists tell us through these exhibitions?
Why choose fiction as a link? To Plato’s assertion I prefer the openness of Aristotle who considers that “mimesis is a way of exploring human reality and deepening our understanding of it”. Will the photographers have been able to tell us real stories through their narrative qualities? Imaginary? As many question marks as there are stories presented.
*Faculty of inventing images (from the Latin imaginatio, “image, vision” is the faculty of representing or forming images from elements derived from sensory perceptions or abstractions.
**Non-fictional trait of a character, of a story. Realistic and sensual way of representing things.

– Odile Andrieu Verguin, Artistic diector of the Promenades Photographiques

More : 
Promenades Photographiques
From July 3rd to August 30, 2021
Vendôme
https://promenadesphotographiques.com/

Cover Picture : © Élie Monferier