SAVOIR-FAIRE
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“First, their eyes. Then their faces, gently illuminated by a warm, enveloping light, followed by their hands and the work they create. Finally, our gaze shifts to the broader context—workshops, interiors designed for specific tasks, or, at times, the landscapes around them.
These 470 portraits of artisans, artists, and workers from across the globe have been carefully crafted by Roman Jehanno. Through them, he shares compelling stories of craftsmanship, skills, learning, and the passing down of knowledge.
Each encounter and the conversations that follow bring him closer to homo faber, the human who creates and shapes, as well as to the artist or keeper of rare expertise. Like the artisans and artists he spends time with, Roman approaches his craft with meticulous care, using a blend of ambient and intricate lighting to sculpt his portraits. His work is infused with precision, passion, and a deep respect for the subjects and the stories they tell.
For Roman, the goal is to shed light—both literally and metaphorically—on the men and women whose passion and mastery radiate. But he doesn’t stop at the face. He places equal importance on the settings and environments. By capturing the details of these surroundings, he offers us a deeper understanding of his subjects—their habits, their routines, their lives.
The project takes shape as an urgent effort to document and preserve the stories of artisans and their unique, often endangered crafts, threatened by industrialization and the march of progress. This mission has taken him to Japan, Peru, the “Far West,” Europe, and Indonesia, among other places. Each journey is preceded by at least three months of preparation.
It is through this careful approach, and the knowledge he acquires along the way, that Roman captures more than just faces. His portraits reveal connections to culture, clues about place, and markers of time. From basket weavers in Eswatini and Andean ceramists to Javanese sulfur miners, Utah hat makers, a nō mask sculptor in Kyoto, and a glassblower in California, this series has become an evolving, living record of humanity at work at the dawn of the 21st century.
Roman’s work goes beyond a simple anthology. He weaves connections between these individuals from across the planet. In the echoes of shared gestures, the meticulous attention to detail, and the flashes of brilliance in their craft, we find both their uniqueness and their commonalities. Rather than focusing on categorizing crafts or mapping their origins, Roman follows the subtle, intuitive thread that connects his portraits, allowing a silent dialogue to emerge between the images and the people within them.”
—Alice Santinelli
JAPAN
PERU
INDONESIA
AUSTRAL AFRICA
FRANCE
WBB
This side-part of Savoir-Faire project is a commission by Pernod Ricard to shoot some of the best bars and bartenders of London, New York, Paris, Singapore and Tokyo.
