First there was the countryside and lanes of Picardie, where Jean-Philippe Lebée was born in 1992, amid the faded extravagance of Oise, on the outskirts of the capital. A region on the fringes, where unoccupied, unconfused nature sits alongside the pallid glow of the modest towns. Lebée developed a marked taste for a style akin to a fine balancing act between urbanisation and bucolic laid-backness. This persistent motive pushed him towards art – first via film, as he produce his first shorts aged 15, and then music before he found his preferred medium, photography. First of all, Lebée depicted people in a chimeric, hybrid natural environment, tinted with new-found mysticism and forgotten nuances.
Then there was the city and the bright lights of Paris. There, he would study art and analyse the dialect of images and sound at the ISFJ school of journalism, before moving on to the prestigious Les Gobelins. His curiosity soon turned into a passion, hooked on the fleeting splendour of those instants that are gone in the blink of an eye.
Jean-Philippe defends a pure, simple form of photography. In his view, photography has to transcend the image to engender ideas and impressions. His style is particularly characterised by strong contrasts , made up of pale, warm glows, like a blend of light and shade sophisticated enough to sidestep the shadows.
Women eclipsed
His illicit glance is at home in the capital, perched on the rooftops of Paris looking down on the city from high up, invoking graceful, poetic scenes. Without going as far as to worship all that is feminine, Lebée projects his aesthetic ideals on women. Their bodies are often crystallised in the eternity of an instant, reigning over the world with the subtlest form of arrogance, like the sublime gargoyles that watch of the City of Light.
Since then, Jean-Philippe Lebée has travelled the world and exhibited in some key venues in Paris (such as Bus Palladium). His curiosity is insatiable and he strives for an even greater mastery of his photographic universe. He has also ambitions as an artistic director, a role that would enable him to stage the fleeting instants caught by the shutter.
http://www.jeanphilippelebee.com
INFORMATION
http://www.picto.fr/prix-de-la-jeune-photographie-de-mode/
