Laurent Condominas, la photo hors du cadre

"I never trusted jobs where all you have to do is press on a button. Yet, I became a photographer"

Fashion photographer at 18, I've since kept wandering around with a camera. I've done news, fashion, beauty, art for magazines in France, Germany, the US, Japan, South Corea, Italy, UK, etc.

I've also done catalogues for museums or art galleries, such as JGM, Galerie de France, le Musée d’Art Moderne de la ville de Paris, Maxwell Davidson Gallery in NY, Temple Gallery in London, Niki Museum in Tokyo, Kunst Halle of Bonn, Sao Paulo pinacoteca, Arken Museum in Copenhague,etc. Also, worked for or about artists like Arman, Brancusi, Philippe Bouveret, César, Yves Klein, Pierre-Marie Lejeune, Christo, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Jean Tinguely, Vileglé, etc...

Participated in exhibitions ; worked for movies as well as a photographer, a cameraman or an actor with Philippe Garrel, Paul Morrissey, Larry Rivers, Jean Rouch, Patrick Deval, Niki de Saint Phalle; directed Actualités Artistiques for Centre Pompidou; went on missions for scientific and/or ou humanitarian non-governmental organisations, including UNESCO.

I had to stop for some years for medical hassle in 2002 and came back different on the photographic trail. At first almost unable to carry my head, I worked on what was under my feet: grounds, soils but also our emptinesses. As I recovered I became interested in void, invading absence, evoking what is out of the frame.

I've been exhibiting some stuff since. These last years:

  •  "Les 70" at the Here is elsewhere gallery, in West Hollywood Pacific Design Center in 2012
  • FIAC 2013: pieces of a series on collaboration at the JGM gallery
  • Some big prints at Pinacoteca of Sao Paolo in 2014
  • The Paris exhibtion on the garden of Tarots came back, this time at the Palais Idéal du Facteur Cheval from 19/09/14 till 15/01/15.
  • Museo Guggenheim of Bilbao February-April 2015
  • Expo Universal in Milano, 2015, photos in the Verybello events section
  • 16ft high prints at the Arken Museum in copenhague, Denmark

Besides all this, I wrote and published books for children like Méchant-Méchant (Meany-Meany), illustrated by world-renown artist Niki de Saint Phalle in french, spanish (Malo-Malo)  and in portuguese -Mau Mau- with Gili Editorial. First published la Différence this book is now at édition courtes et longues where I also published with Nina Missir, "l'arbre et le poteau" a story about a friendship between a tree and an electric pole in 2014). I'm always looking for illustrators to put drawings on more stories that I tell children around the world.

My pictures on Niki de Saint Phalle will be found en cliquant ici

"If you want to find something else, say the wise old man, all you have to do is look somewhere else". Which is why I still cannot practice photography as a career  but rather like an endeavour to show what was not in the lens of my camera: the off-the-frame, the permanent displacement of what was or will be.

A woman, a grass field, drying laundry, city trafic, a piece of plastic junk. Just sharing what we believe is real…