From his childhood spent in Nice, Jean-Flavien Piquemal has kept the powerful attraction for light, colors, encounters.
"When I understood that every morning I would see this light again, I could not believe in my happiness" said Henri Matisse when he moved to Nice. Jean-Flavien Piquemal, he, like a painter, also tries to capture the light, including in the eyes of the beings he photographs.
Eclectic, this artist is definitely. Cinephile, music lover, unrepentant chatterbox, he goes to meet images in the streets of the cities he has the chance to cross. Because it is indeed the street, with its vibrations and its jerky rhythms, its colorful and frantic people, its saturated colors and its deep shadows, which interests him above all.
“Where there is light, there must be shadow, where there is shadow, there must be light. This quote from the novel 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami expresses quite well the intention of this artist who tries to educate our gaze to perceive the ambivalences, the complexity, the multidimensionality of reality.
He recently received the Grand Prize at the 2024’s Leica Street Photo Contest.
