Fanny Boucher

Fanny Boucher is a specialist in photogravure: a printmaking technique, developed in the nineteenth century, which combines etching with a photographic process. Her Héliog studio is one of just a dozen worldwide which still master this rare technique. Since 2000 Fanny Boucher has collaborated with many of the world’s foremost contemporary artists, including Zao Wouki, Jean-Michel Othoniel, JR, Annette Messager, Yayoi Kusama, and Emilia and Ilia Kabakov. In 2015 she was granted the title of Maître d’Art.

Fanny Boucher has developed a rare degree of expertise, extending from prints and artist’s books to one-off, custom-made interior design pieces. She has always sought innovative outlets for her techniques, which has led her to apply her skills to the worlds of luxury and design, through commissioned projects. Her work has been shown in the National Museums of Japan and China.

For her project at Villa Kujoyama, Fanny Boucher studied the aesthetic of the akari shoji. These paper-covered wood panels diffuse light and create effects of transparency; frameworks for the silhouetted scenes played out behind them. During her residency, she researched Washi paper and folding screens, photographed remarkable trees and met Kyoto artists in preparation for an exhibition, in France in 2024, of a wall-mounted composition. This Arboris shoji resonates with her first Arboris, which earned Fanny Boucher the 2020 Prix Liliane Bettencourt pour l’Intelligence de la Main® in the Talents category. She now includes this aesthetic of translucent panels in the creations she proposes to interior designers.

Portrait : Gilles Leimdorfer
Photos : Arboris, Fanny Boucher, crédit Edouard Elias
Arboris, Fanny Boucher, crédit Edouard Elias
Heliog protection recto, crédit David Meignan