It’s my favorite of the month and when I told him, he replied:
“I contacted PHOTO more than once at the time without a response and it is you, its former editor-in-chief, who appreciates my dance, who will present it today.
You are giving me a huge present and making a dream of more than fifty years come true…”
So, I’m correcting a 50-year-old mistake and I’m happy about it!
Jean-Jacques Naudet
1967, I started my life as a photographer by pure chance, I simply needed to work and one bad day after another, I arrived in a photography studio.
I was eighteen years old and from my first steps in the enormous light box, I learned how to vacuum, dust and wash dishes between a real photographer, real assistants and models older than me , they were at least twenty years old.
Day after day, I was less taunted a bit like at school, and day after day, I learned to juggle the “Hasselblad” backs, load, change backgrounds, take exposure times with a big Gossens cell.” by hand, clean the optics and vacuum again.
Fortunately I had Jean-François the first assistant, a tall man with a laughing look who knew everything and guided me through each of my steps, he then did it all his life and now he guides me from a far away place…
I also discovered the laboratory, the adjustments on a huge “Durst”, the nights of prints, the nagging noise of the rotary glazer and the crazy races after the shooting to go to Sevran to the Kodak laboratory to drop off “test” films, for ektachromes…
All this for a few francs or not, a hot meal and a sheltered bed in a corner of the studio, with the immense joy of learning to put me to sleep…
One day, I met Jean-Jacques, a fashion photographer friend of Guy Bourdin, he was arriving straight from New York and from Vogue magazine in an old Bentley…and Nikon F in hand, he became “the one who taught me everything” about movement, the beauty of women and lifelong friendship.
I must tell you that we were living through the “Blow Up” years, Antonioni was interested in our world and large sequences of his film projected our lives of assistantship on the screens of the grand boulevards, but did he understand that We weren’t playing?…
I’m jumping to make it short, armed with sparse hair for 18 months, it’s a lot and it ruins the first dream, because others have taken your place, while you were standing still and turning around in the army…
For me, the return to the civilized world was not problematic and I let myself be taken by chance, but not just any chance, photography was good, but the world of images, perhaps a little better…and then everything moved and everything changed, gray gave way to color, girls became more desirable than ever…
The layout department winked at me and I agreed to open its door.
We were in 1971, in the midst of the visual revolution and I experienced it, first in an advertising agency as a layout artist, junior artistic director, then as head of a creative studio.
The record industry sold vinyl records of all sizes endlessly, but the covers were pathetic and when compared with “Made in the USA”, everything was terrible.
1973, with a printer friend, around and after several drinks, the idea came to us to create the first studio intended for French record covers by recruiting real photographers, real illustrators…immediate success and immediate anxieties with the whims of stars and the heavy nights until the muddy early mornings, leaving Castel’s in Saint-Germain-des-Près.
I put an abrupt end to my situation and went to the radio, I assisted a cinema man Remo Forlani and with him I learned the set, the direction of photography and the direction, it was RTL, with big heads, with friendly drivers, but one day of spleen, I once again changed course for another hope…
1981, radios were installed in kitchens or bathrooms, they were free and everyone sang their jingle…I headed south, to Nice, it was still comfortable and I took charge of the programs of an almost real radio station full of sunshine.
Photography still didn’t tickle me and it had really moved away from my life, but I had kept in touch with my friend Jean-Jacques and his fashion work, from time to time, on the phone, we said to each other: Are you doing well? ?…see you soon, and kisses.
First I wrote a book on volume models for “Éditions Atlas” and then I went to Saumur from where I praise cavalry, but not the four-legged one, the one with tracks and big cannons.
And, nothing more, I was in Nice, the weather is nice and I was bored, but one day in February I received a little digital “Fuji” as a gift from a very young nephew…a little note accompanied the machine which explained that I needed a computer and that and that and that…it amused and intrigued me…it worked!
I woke up suddenly, put my eye back into the frame and everything fell into place and I pressed the shutter button on my second real life.
Photographer?…Don’t worry, we can do it.
Fuji was mini, but 1,500,000 pixels, guys, wasn’t nothing in 1996…and I sold my first photographs to the Tourist Office for their website which looked like a real gas factory…but it was already that.
My life had only been made up of encounters which allowed me, fortunately for me, to only open good doors…dancing was far away, I was in F1, Monaco obliges…
2001, I equipped myself professionally: a Nikon D1X, the definition was at the top, a 70/200 and a 35/70, I had a lot of envious people around me, notably the local press photographers who always worked with old film “Canons”, one of them even told me: your digital thing will never work…
2002, around a table at the “Brasserie de l’Opéra” in old Nice, my new destiny became clearer by meeting by chance, Jean-Michel, ballet master of the opera and young former dancer of Maurice Béjart …My first pas de deux was not far away.
I photographed my first ballet and already, Monaco winked at me again, but this time it was lyrical art and my meeting with its new director who, after a few minutes, suggested that I take photographs of his operas there. and why not: Let’s raise the curtain!…
An appointment was made in December 2007, I only left fifteen years later in December 2022, after having photographed the greatest voices of this century and the last…Rolex opened its doors to me thanks to a portrait of the immense Cecilia Bartoli, which they kept for a few years.
Nikon France was interested in my work in low light and I was preparing to participate in the Nikon Tour 2008, I returned from this trip to France with a brand new “Nikon D3” and a great collaboration which still lasts today…
It is with the Monte-Carlo ballets that I really got into dance, then photographed the biggest international companies and arrived at the gates of the temple of ballet: the Bolshoi ballet in Moscow.
2016, the agent of the very great Moscow star dancer Svetlana Zakharova asked me to take exclusive photographs of her show in Monaco, once done, he chose one of them, and it was the illustration of her world tour.
With the door of the temple open, I then photographed all the dancers in this extraordinary company and made Red Square my place for an early morning stroll…
On February 24, 2022, everything suddenly stopped with Russia and its dance: Ukraine was on fire, bad scenario and the curtain fell.
Stunned, I got up and got back on the road, with a new project which took me two years in Spain with Flamenco and its flamboyant universe: Antonio Gades, Antonio Najarra, The National Ballet of Spain and the beautiful flamenco Maria.. .
2024, everything is ready, the last photographs are processed and I will perhaps do a new exhibition in a few months, despite the headache and the hit on the wallet that France is suffering from…
Alain Hanel – stage photographer.
PS: All my photographs are taken “live”, I never use a studio because live art is only on stage and not elsewhere.
