Since its creation, the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès has been an active supporter of the visual arts through a range of programmes, including Latitudes, launched in 2024. The new initiative is the successor to Immersion: a French-American Photographic Commission, originally established in 2014 in partnership with the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson (Paris) and the International Center of Photography (New York), as a transatlantic exchange of residencies between France and the United States. Latitudes extends the scheme to other countries and regions, with the same partner organisations. Côte d’Ivoire is the first country honoured, for a two-year period. For its first edition, mentored by Clément Chéroux, director of the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Latitudes salutes the work of French-Ivorian photographer FrançoisXavier Gbré, who receives a grant of 40,000 euros for the making of a new photographic series. François-Xavier Gbré was chosen by a jury of representatives of the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson and the International Center ofPhotography, from a shortlist of four photographers proposed by Clément Chéroux. Gbré’s project is a photographic journey across West Africa, conceived as an eye-witness account of the railway heritage of the AbidjanOuagadougou line and its intimate links with the region’s political and social history. The work will be showcased at exhibitions in Paris (2025) and New York (2026), as part of a project currently in development with contributors from the Ivorian arts scene. It will also be featured in a monograph co-published by the Atelier EXB and the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès.

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