Photographer Feature: Jean-Francois Lepage
“Certitude that the only person I can really save is – myself.”
French photographer Jean-Francois Lepage has been pushing the boundaries of fashion photography for more than 3 decades. Best known for the dark undercurrent and bizarre style of his work, he captures a sort of loneliness in his subjects, giving a unique voice to his oeuvre. Throughout his career, Lepage has periodically pulled away from editorial photography to focus on his work as a fine artist, honing his techniques and returning to the world of photography with newfound inspiration.
The following gallery is from Lepage’s most recent body of work entitled “Recycle (Prelude) Series,” which is currently a traveling exhibition. The series is comprised of recycled photographs from his archive of past photo shoots, in which he splices and manipulates 8×10 Polaroid Colorgraph 891 film. “I’m like a surgeon who faces his patient with lucidity and commitment but with the absolute certitude that the only person I can really save is — myself.”
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This series has exhibited in Paris and Amsterdam and will be showing at the next Art Paris Art Fair from March 31 to April 3, 2016, where Jean-Francois Lepage will have a solo show at the Galerie Madé booth. Also, there will be a book of the series launching during the next Unseen Photo Fair in September 2016.
Jean-François Lepage, born in Paris (France) in 1960, is a French photographer. His work, at the intersection of painting, cinema and contemporary photography, represents a very different way of seeing the world of fashion. His approach is similar to that of the Plastic arts and illustrates a significant change in fashion photography. Lepage began his photographic career in Paris in 1980 and made his first exhibition of portraits of the French actress Isabelle Adjani in 1983. He photographed many top models including Naomi Campbell, Gisele Bündchen, Hannelore Knuts, Lara Stone, Rianne ten Haken and Kirsten Owen. Since 1980, Jean- François Lepage was has been published in several international magazines including GQ, Harper’s Bazaar, 7000 magazine, Sleek, Stiletto, Twill, and Vogue.