Alain Laboile
I'm excited to be featuring one of my current favorite photographers. Below you can see a sample and read of these multiple bodies of work; La Famille, Reflexion author du basin, Color, M-Monochrome and Perdre du temps. I discovered his work on LensCulture, which is an excellent resource for discovering photography. He recently won a LensCulture award for street photography, top 100. His work has been exhibited internationally, and last year he published the book, At the edge of the world with Kehrer Verlag.
Biography
Born on May 1, 1968 in Bordeaux, France, Alain Laboile is a photographer and father of six.
In 2004, as he needed to put together a portfolio of his work as a sculptor, he acquired a camera, and thus developed a taste for macrophotography, spurred by his passion for entomology.
Later on, he pointed his lens towards his growing family which became his major subject : a life on the edge of the world, where intemporality and the universality of childhood meet.
La Famille
I’m a father of six. Through my photographic work I celebrate and document my family life : a life on the edge of the world, where intemporality and the universality of childhood meet. Day to day I create a family album that constitutes a legacy that I will pass on to my children. My work reflects our way of life, revolving around their childhood. My photographs will be the testimony of that. In a way my approach can be considered similar to the one of an ethnologist. Though my work is deeply personal, it is also accessible, addressing human nature and allowing the viewer to enter my world and reflect on their own childhoods. Fed everyday and shared with the world via the internet, my photographic production has become a mean of communication, leading to a questioning about freedom, nudity, being and having.
Reflexion Autour du Bassin
"I was drawn to Reflexion Autour du Bassin or Reflection Around the Basin. It's Tim Walker mixed with Tim Burton with a bit of Ryan McGinley thrown in. With his kids ranging in age from 18 to 4, each photo has that youthful feel, yet all seem more like a storybook illustration than an actual reflection. There's a carefree spirit about each one. It's like taking a trip into the mind of a child and appreciating its many twists and turns." --Alice Yoo, My Modern Metropolis.
Color
This projects fits into the same process as "La Famille" : snapshots of our daily life in the countryside. However, for some of these seized moments, a color treatment appeared as the manifest choice.
All images © Alain Laboile