I particularly appreciate when my photos show just the bare minimum, only enough for the viewer’s imagination to fill in the missing pieces. I trust the viewer to make the magic happen.

I also place great importance on the titles of my photographs. I see them as a complement, an extension, sometimes even a paradox.

Because I enjoy blending different art forms, it’s not unusual for me to pair some of my photos with music. I’ve been composing music for more then 40 years now. To me, this immersive form is reminiscent of cinema, something I very much enjoy.

"Tell me what you photograph, I'll tell you what you're afraid to lose".

I like to say that I am not a photographer, but rather an artist with a camera. There is some truth in this quip. It is perhaps due to my parallel lives as a music composer, singer, puppeteer, or video editor.

Of course, I have been influenced by other photographers and hold great admiration for the great painters. But I am also spoken to by the work of artists who are masters in the theatre of gesture, wordless symbolism, puppeteers, and cartoonists.

I have always been fascinated by the power of non-verbal language that which, like music, crosses language barriers and goes straight to your heart with astonishing accuracy. As with music, it is the emotion that interests me in photography. It is no wonder that I naturally turned toward portrait photography.

MY APPROACH

Through my work, I attempt to capture a part of the inexpressible in humanity. My work claims to reveal the intimate, what we carry and hide within us, sometimes like a treasure, sometimes like a burden, without ever revealing it.

Sometimes crazy, tender, or even tragic, I attempt to capture the human adventure in all its nobility, in the unnamable and the moving. This adventure, which is also my own, fascinates me.

For years, I claimed to do portrait photography. It is only recently that I discovered I was mistaken. Yes, it has happened a few times that I captured the true essence of someone who sat before my camera. But my true challenge pushes me to illustrate something broader than the individual, beyond their color or gender, and to seize an emotion that will strike me straight in the heart.

Through my models, I tell a story. It is sometimes mine, sometimes that of others or at least, the perception I have of it. Ultimately, I am only unveiling different facets of myself, of my perceptions, what moves me, makes me laugh, revolts me, or saddens me.

Me, posing as a mirror before you and asking: "Do you recognize yourself, too?"

Jean-Francois Leger