Winner of the Prix Maison Ruinart 2026, French photographer Philippe Jarrigeon explores the enchanting landscapes of Champagne, where surreal forms, playful imagery, and nature intertwine in a world suspended between reality and imagination.
Enchanted trees, landscapes steeped in memory, and a natural world that seems to come alive. This is the world of Le Vrai du Faux (in English, The True from the False), the new photographic project that has earned French photographer Philippe Jarrigeon the eighth edition of the Prix Maison Ruinart 2026, an annual award celebrating an emerging talent from the Émergence section of Paris Photo.
For this new project, Jarrigeon turns his lens to Champagne, in northeastern France, transforming its landscapes into a realm suspended between imagination and reality. At the heart of the series are the Faux de Verzy, remarkable beech trees with twisted, sinuous forms that seem to have emerged from a surreal fairytale. Through his lens, these trees take on an almost supernatural presence, like mysterious creatures glowing from within. Around them unfolds a world of seashells, remnants of a long-vanished sea, floral arrangements, luminous forms, and enigmatic figures, creating a continuous dialogue between past and present, nature and artifice.
The result is a photographic narrative that is playful, visionary, and subtly unsettling, where botanical, animal, human, and inanimate elements intertwine, blurring the boundaries between what is real and what is imagined. With his distinctive sense of humour, irony, and subtle sarcasm, Jarrigeon reimagines the representation of nature, turning it into a stage for unexpected encounters, transformations, and visual paradoxes.
Born in France, Philippe Jarrigeon graduated from ECAL (École cantonale d’art de Lausanne) in 2006, where he has been teaching since 2008. His creative universe, moving between photography, fashion, and surrealism, has been showcased at leading international venues and events, including the International Festival of Fashion and Photography in Hyères, the Fotomuseum Winterthur, and the Galerie des Galeries at Galeries Lafayette Haussmann.
Drawing inspiration from surrealism, 1980s advertising imagery, and the visual language of fashion, Jarrigeon has developed a distinctive photographic style in which humour and carefully constructed compositions reveal unexpected perspectives on the familiar. In Le Vrai du Faux, this approach takes on a new dimension, inviting viewers to look at nature not simply as a landscape, but as a source of imagination, wonder, and storytelling.
