Damien Bachelot
Collector
Damien Bachelot built a career in finance (co-founding Aforge Finance in 1996, later serving as president of Compagnie financière Degroof Petercam, and today directing Haxo Finance) alongside which he and his wife Florence assembled one of France's most substantial private photography collections. The collection began almost by chance: advising Hachette's photography division on monetizing its archive in the early 2000s, the firm attended the resulting auction, and the couple bought their first prints. What started as an incidental transaction became a defining passion, and since 2004 the Collection Bachelot has grown to more than a thousand works, centered on humanist photography and on photographers with whom the couple maintain direct, personal relationships, including a long friendship with Harry Gruyaert.
The collection has been exhibited at the Musée Nicéphore Niépce in Chalon-sur-Saône, the Villa Médicis in Rome, and the Musée Réattu in Arles, and regularly lends works to institutions including the ICP in New York and Tate. Beyond acquiring, the Bachelots have supported younger photographers directly (by financing books and print editions) and have catalogued the collection systematically since 2016, guided by a stated principle of never selling a work once it enters the collection.
For the masterclass, Damien Bachelot will meet participants in front of some of the prints of their collection, at Nathalie Obadia gallery, currently showing work from his collection alongside the french photographer Gilles Caron.
WHAT DAMIEN CAN BRING TO MASTERCLASS PARTICIPANTS
Bachelot will share the experience that the collectors are looking to gain: not a lecture on the subject, but a concrete account of building a collection over two decades. He will discuss the difference between an instinctive impulse and a deliberate structure, how two people with different temperaments navigate shared decisions, and why he insists on meeting every living photographer whose work he acquires.
Bachelot embodies the idea that collecting, practiced seriously over the long term, relies as much on relationships and instinct as on informed judgment. His insights into funding books and publications for emerging photographers will also touch on an important value: collecting, seen as a form of ongoing support, not simply as an acquisition.