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JEAN-MICHEL LENOIR
“A resolutely minimalist and suggestive approach to get to the essential. Not trying to show a subject for what it is, but for what it expresses. This is my way of telling stories, of translating my sensibility”. J-M. Lenoir
A passion for nature from an early age led Lenoir to photography as a means to capture magical moments of nature and wildlife. Starting with wildlife and wide spaces, he developed his own vision of photography.
Landscape photography is an eternal quest for atmosphere where the light and the quest of beauty are key references, his aesthetic landmark. His photographic intention relies on his magnetic attraction for wide spaces combined with his quest of beautiful lights.
A way that inspires him and his instinct of freedom.
In photography, he is looking for simple pictures, which go straight to the subject core, with very few things in the frame.
Lenoir follows a suggestive approach: he does not try to show a subject as it is, but to share what it expresses. It is his way of telling stories and conveying his sensibility, like his recent work “Evanescence”.
Combining his passion for pictures with rugged landscapes, he organizes and guides photo tours with Photographes du Monde agency for seven years. From north of Europe (Scotland, Norway, Finland) to South america (Chile and Bolivia),his photographic world leads him into areas of wilderness from where he draws his main source of inspiration.
Lenoir is an ambassador for Fujifilm cameras and Cokin filters.
New Work - The Hamptons
ELEMENTS
EMERGENCE
“Evanescence” results from Lenoir's research on minimalist atmospheres and muted landscapes, photographed anywhere from his own doorstep to the vast expanses of Northern Europe.
Snow, ice and mists make up the soul of this purely photographic work, the guiding thread that has fueled his photographic outlook for several years. This series of pictures builds on his previous work, “Sylvan Souls”. It embodies a graphic and aesthetic vision of nature – a way for him to get to the heart of the matter, keeping only the few elements that outline, rather than define the subject.
It is a contemplative form of expression, the fruit of a photographic intention that favors suggestion and the development of his creative vision rather than a more figurative approach. “Letting your emotions speak to perceive objects in what they express rather than what they are.”
Evanescence refers to the act of slowly disappearing, symbolism that is very present when one observes natural phenomena like snow showers that blur the tree lines, mist rising above a pond, the white of a wave breaking over a rock, water running under a frozen river or an animal whose silhouette fades to blend in with the white…
White, this non-color that enhances a wealth of nuances and reveals the softness of contrasts is what binds these muted atmospheres that Lenoir loves. In this monochrome world between dreams and reality, he contemplates, observes and seeks the moment when magic operates, turning an image into an outline.
These moments fuel a very oneiric vision of nature, which compels him to go beyond reality and reproduce it in a different light, bringing out emotion and poetry to let mystery take effect.