Guy Jean Genevier Creative Photography

At first, the cinema held fascination for him, especially the work of Jean Luc Godard, the French New Wave director. But despite winning some prizes for his films, he soon realized that movie-making had its drawbacks; you needed a crew and a lot of money to do a production. But to photograph? That was a different matter and at 25 he started working for publications in Paris where he began to achieve success.

“I became interested in the still photograph,” he says, “and realized that photography is a way to be the producer, director, and cameraman so as to have complete control over the image.” He also discovered the color work of American photographer Pete Turner, and the black and white pictures of fellow Frenchman Jean Loup Sieff, both of which had a great influence on his work “especially,” he says, “because they were masters of composition.”

Genevier’s images are powerful because they are meticulously pre-conceptualized, each element of the final image is planned before the shutter is released. And his film training – in which all things real and imagined are possible – has contributed to the freedom he feels when he shoots. He encourages other photographers to begin seeing the same way and says there’s a big difference between simply recording a scene and turning it into a work of art.

Like most French photographers (and many others), he pays homage to Henri Cartier-Bresson. Says Genevier: “One must always try for ‘L’instant decisif,’ the decisive moment which is the indefinable instant when subject and form come together in a photograph to produce not merely description but poetry.”

For ten years I did many night photographs in downtown Paris - France. At first, it was my artistic choice to use black and white film, sometimes pushed to ISO 1600. That probably was due to the fact that I liked and had studied the cinema and thus tried to use these techniques in photography. One of my self-assigned projects was to try to capture the essence of a train station when it was nearly deserted at night. In fact I am an artist who uses photography to express himself. What interests me about photography is that I can transform reality, that is, I can start with reality but change it or interpret it as I see it in my mind.

Essentially, reality is like a starting point. My work, though, is subjective. I have a personal vision : what I imagine before I shoot. Good images do not come easily, they must be pursued, hunted down, and caught before it’s too late. Before taking a photograph I must feel that something is there, that it has been given to me to seize and that I really must have it. That is why I am fascinated with the night, because there is nothing there but essence : dark and light. Then I can take those images and rework them on computers until I am satisfied that my vision has been achieved.

A brief list of published images are : Digital Camera Magazine, Attic Magazine, Le Photographe, Creation Magazine, La Banque de l’Image, Photographers of the end of Millenium, Fotonoviembre. Photographs also featured in many Internet sites.

For many years my work is represented by international agencies, To use my images commercially they need to be licensed through one of my reps, or if you would like to discuss the use of a potential image please contact Guy Jean Genevier directly.