Antoine SCHNECK, Ortie

Born in 1963 in Suresnes, France. Lives and works in Paris.

In collaboration with Galerie Pierre-Alain Challier, Paris.

Photography entered Antoine Schneck's life when, at the age of 12, he discovered an old Kodak camera in a closet. A vocation was born, and from then on, his heroes were Henri Cartier-Bresson, William Klein, Richard Avedon, and Marc Riboud. Antoine Schneck went on to study at the Louis Lumière film school. It wasn't until he was 30 that Antoine Schneck fully and definitively devoted himself to photography.

Whether capturing faces or scrutinizing the contours of an olive tree, or whether he is examining a recumbent figure at the Basilica of Saint-Denis, Antoine Schneck is constantly in search of means to capture otherness and to allow us to live the same experience after him.

Here, photography is employed in service of a sensitive approach, akin to painting in its methods and objectives, that of a man who looks upon every being and thing with the humility and extreme attention of one who has learned to shed his knowledge in order to encounter the unknown.

Built according to a constant protocol—adopting a black background, rejecting any decor, choosing an acrylic glass that lends the work a unique depth—Antoine Schneck's work is meant to be experienced as much as seen. To be experienced even more, for this closeness is the condition of an encounter. The one the artist has with each model observed. The one he allows us to live as soon as we stand before one of his works, as in a true face-to-face encounter with our humanity.