Biography
Laurent Chéhère is a french photographer, born at the foot of the parisian hill of Ménilmontant, a neighborhood he explores with the same unceasing curiosity as he does in Bamako, Lhasa, Tokyo, Srinagar or Valparaiso. Also, he likes to explore every field of photography from reportage to digital manipulation.
The "Flying Houses » are inspired by a poetic vision of old Paris, by Jules Vernes, Albert Robida, Hayao Miyazaki, Albert Lamorisse, Wim Wenders, Federico Fellini, Marcel Carné, Jean Cocteau and a lot of others references. These buildings are also inspired by poor and cosmopolitan neighborhoods of Paris, where the uncertainty of daily life is an alarming reality for impoverished communities, particularly the Gypsies and African immigrants. Separated from their urban context, and broken free from the anonymity of the street, these buildings narrate a story about the individual lives, dreams, and hopes of their inhabitants. The large scale of the photographs allows viewers to discover details hidden within the realistic compositions. Two diverging interpretations are thus created depending on the distance from which the viewer approaches the images : from afar the houses look whimsical and carefree, while up close, the details reveal a more melancholy and complex story. The artist uses this distance to propose a different point of view and alert against preconceived ideas and prejudices.
His work was published in Time Magazine, Vogue, Harper’s Baazar Russia, The Guardians, The Telegraph, La Repubblica, Vanity Fair, Polka Magazine, O’Globo, Bild, Daily Mail, Die Zeit, Stern, Il Post, Huffington Post, BBC, Arte TV...
Since 2012 this series has been seen in numerous exhibitions, fairs and festivals around the world as ParisPhoto 2013, Tokyo Photo Festival 2015, Guatephoto 2012, Seoul Lunar Photo Festival 2015, Photo Phnom Penh Festival 2013, Pingyao Photo Festival 2012, GetxoPhoto 2013, New York, Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography in Moscow 2015, Galeria Lume in Sao Paulo, Fotografica Bogota Festival 2015, Caumont Art center in Aix-en-Provence 2015…
Laurent Chéhère is represented by ParisBeijing Gallery (Paris) and Muriel Guepin Gallery (New York).
