Andrei D’s Blog

Wednesday, February 21st, 2007

Today’s Artists - Jean-Sébastien Monzani

I am back with a new post from the “Today’s Artists” series. My choice this time: Jean-Sébastien Monzani a Swiss/French nationality artist, born on Apr 9th 1975.

“Jean-Sébastien Monzani is a self-taught photographer. He started to learn photography in 2000 while doing his PhD in Computer Graphics (EPFL, Lausanne) and quickly focused on portraits. His images are often constructed as photo-series - something between fashion photography and movie storyboards. Since 2002, all of his works are digital photos. He enjoys keeping his photo sessions as simple and friendly as possible and focuses on adjusting the colors and mood in the digital darkroom. Conveying an atmosphere is one of the most important factors in his work.” (from here)

Next, Mr. Monzani kindly accepted to answer me a few questions about him and his work:

Inspiration plays a key part in every artist’s work, what inspires you to create the most?

I’m mainly inspired by movies, paintings, and other photographers. Some books can also inspire me, I’m thinking for instance of Haruki Murakami’s novels.

Does your technical background (I know about your work in designing models to control virtual autonomous humans) relates in any way with your artistic work?

Not really. I have two separated works: I’m both teaching Computer Science in the University and working as a freelance graphic designer. My PhD in Computer Graphics rooted in my interest in art and graphics in general but it was more part of the lab’s research than my own personal interests.

I know you are also writing and performing plays on the theatre stage, please tell me a few words about theatre as a different way of expression than photography.

Theatre is about emotions, and pretending you’re someone else. What I like when watching a play is both emotions and the way theatre and its conventions can be used to create visual elements that have no equivalents elsewhere. It’s not about building a visual universe and a story like in movies, but more using different ways of expressions.

If you would have to chose two of your photos, one to which you care the most and one which best represents you as an artist, which photos would you chose?

That’s a tough question This spontaneous photo is one of my favorites:

Atlantyopia, on the other hand, shows how I like to manipulate my photos to create a mood and storyline, and how much I care about colors and composition:

Please tell me two name of artists that influenced you the most in your work over the years.

I love the enigmatic work of Gregory Crewdson and I would really like to have such a lot of equipment as he does.
I really enjoy some paintings of Edward Hopper, they have a nice tension, dramatic sense and wonderful colors.

What will be your future plans?

I am going to stop teaching at the university and hope to work fulltime as a freelance graphic designer.

Any final words for us?

Thank you for your time, I hope that you will enjoy visiting my gallery: pictures speak for themselves

Thank you too Mr. Monzani for this interview!

Indeed, pictures speak for themselves, so visit these two sites with very beautiful photos and illustrations by Jean-Sébastien Monzani: http://www.jsmonzani.com/ and http://www.simplemoment.com/.

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