Laurent Baheux works with Sony equipment. He uses three different cameras, which each correspond to a need: speed, details, and fast automatic focus.

Post-production is synonymous with for him long hours. He works slowly and needs to “digest” his images before developing them. In the development phase, he usually contents himself with touching up the contrasts, to obtain deep blacks. The photo is made at the moment of capture, not afterwards.

In the series Paradise Lost, Bernhard Hartmann focuses on forgotten gardens and moves away from magnificent interiors without spectators, revealing an open-air world. Bernhard Hartmann ’s melancholic images are once again the result of his frenetic, almost obsessional and poetic research, through which he immortalizes abandoned sites on his travels . Here, nature gradually reclaims its stake, invading spaces that seem to have been forgotten by civilization. These sites brave all kinds of weather, welcoming silence after the sound of human voices have long since faded.

Born in the United Kingdom, Lee Jeffries lives in Manchester and constantly travels to major Western cities to meet people living in the streetsstreets , whose nobility he seeks to capture. Formerly an accountant, it was during a marathon he undertook in London that he crossed paths with a young woman snuggled in her sleeping bag near Leicester Square.
His perception of homeless people was radically transformed and Lee Jeffries couldn’t resist photographing her. This wonderful encounter marked the start of his artistic and social approach: the homeless became his sole subjects.
This humanist photographer explains that each image is the result of long discussions with each individual, a privileged moment that allows him to establish a connection that is particularly palpable in their gaze. “The emotion is in the eyes,” explains Lee Jeffries , whose majestic black and white portraits enable him to collect funds to assist and bear witness to the difficult living conditions of these isolated individuals, forgotten and worn down by a lifetime of suffering.

Buddhist monk and neurobiologist, Mathieu Ricard is also a photographer and author. He has shared the grandiose beauty of the Himalayan region with us for many years. Born in 1946, he travelled to India for the first time in 1967 and, on this occasion, met remarkable masters of the Buddhist Tibetan tradition.

After living in Tibet and Bhutan, he definitely moved to Nepal to the Séchèn Monastery and became the Dalai Lama’s French interpreter in 1989, helping him to maintain a continuous dialogue between East and West. A life spent in this intimacy allowed him to capture, through his lens, the masters, the landscapes, and the populations of this isolated region of the world, whose magnificent portrait he paints.

Mathieu Ricard is the author of many photography books, including The Spirit of Tibet, Himalayan Buddhist, Tibet: Gazes of Compassion, An immobile journey, and Dancing Monks of Tibet and Bhutan: Land of Serenity. His photographs have been exhibited in New-York, Paris, Perpignan, Winterthur, Stockholm, and Hong-Kong.

BJ and Richeille Formento met in 2005. Born in Hawaii, BJ arrived in New York in 1999. He was 35 years old and worked as an assistant to some of the greatest photographers such as Mary Ellen Mark, Hans Neleman, and Annie Leibovitz. Married three months after they first met, they joined forces, combining commercial and art photography. Owing to the recent economic crisis, the Formento duo have decided to create a more personal collection with Circumstance, a tragic-romantic filmic representation of time. The project is at once cynical and bewitching, exploring questions of identity and the transitory state of people and places. The initiative of the project was very sudden, although they took time to develop the concept.

In November 2009, the Formento couple decided to pack their bags, bringing their three Siamese cats along for the ride in an 8-metre-long silver Air Stream – the stereotypical, retro-futuristic US caravan. Then they zoomed off, like escapees, traversing the homeland of Uncle Sam in a kind of headlong rush, just as their models are doing in the portraits taken by Richeille. And so began an era: an epic, cross-country adventure novel. On a shoestring budget, their plan was clear: five months, twenty-five states, and fifty women. Their goal was not just to create photographs but to play with the fine line between mercantilism and art imbued with a greater social conscience.

Formento + Formento are famous for their romantic and elegant photographs that explore the themes of love, desire, and the burden of memory in desaturated filmic scenes. Their style reveals a fascination for atmosphere and texture – a strong sense of place is ever present.

From the United States, to Cuba, Mexico, India, or Japan, they combine a fervent passion for photography and cinema with an enduring love for others.