Photographies Contemporaines – Points de Vue

Foreword by Christian Caujolle

Jean-François Campos began his career as a reporter during a trip to Berlin, shortly before the fall of the Wall. He continued freelancing for Libération; until 1997, he provided photographic coverage of daily political and social news. Winner of numerous awards, the Master Class Prize of the World Press Photo Foundation (1996), the Foundation HSBC pour la Photographie Prize (1997)… he was a member of the VU Agency until 2000 and defined himself in terms of his documentary and humanist concerns.

He then made a radical switch to fashion, incapable of continuing to live the lives of others by proxy. He had to learn everything, from a certain idea of beauty to artificial lighting effects. He identified the emotions he was obsessed with: “rejection, solitude, a women one desires but is untouchable, secret and mysterious”. And then the obvious became inevitable, when, at last, he dared to put his models out into the street.

He found his style in becoming once again what he is, coming back with feeling to photojournalism. He has established a coherent link between his life before and after. His relationship to photography remains intact it is like an obsession. Something which has to come out of you, by necessity. Whether it is leaving for Berlin to become a body in that city, or, today, facing up to the challenge of youth and beauty.