Véronique Rolland is an artist whose work in still and moving image centres on our relationship with nature and the environment. Her work has been widely exhibited and acquired by major international collections including the National Portrait Gallery and Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and Pompidou Centre, Paris.
Rolland began her career as a portrait photographer, undertaking editorial assignments for titles including the Sunday Times Magazine, the Guardian and the Independent, moving towards fine art projects in the early 2000s. Often creating photographs in series, she revisits places over a period of time, immersing herself and her sitters in the landscape in order to express the transience of the human condition through the cycle of the seasons. Her images carry an ecological message, expressing both nature’s fragility and its possession of a constancy beyond our comprehension. Through her observation of landscape and the human form, Rolland engages with the quasi-mystical, the Sublime, and the Romantic, reminding us that the natural world we take for granted is under threat.
Her urge to bear witness to specific places leads her to create records in a variety of media, including photographs, videos, samples and sound recordings. She has published three critically acclaimed limited-edition books: 6 (2011), 54°0′13.176″N 2°32′52.278″W (2017) and Memories of an Unknown Island (2022) and she is the recipient of The Arts Foundation Fellowship in Portraiture.
Collections
Rolland’s photographic prints and limited-edition books are widely collected by private individuals and public institutions. Her work is housed in the permanent collections of prestigious museums and galleries including:
National Portrait Gallery, London
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Artists’ Books Collection, V&A National Art Library, London
Kandinsky Library, Pompidou Centre, Paris