Our artists
Jean-Christophe Ballot
Jean-Christophe Ballot divides his time between photography and documentary filmmaking.
As an architect with a degree from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, a graduate of FEMIS, and a former resident of the Villa Médicis, his works are featured in the collections of numerous museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Louvre Museum, the National Fund for Contemporary Art, the Centre Pompidou, the Maison Européenne de la photographie, the Carnavalet Museum, the Petit Palais, the Rodin Museum, the National Library of France, the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, and the Thessaloniki Museum of Contemporary Art.
His entire body of work focuses on space: urban landscapes and architecture, ports, boundary spaces, places of memory, spiritual places, natural landscapes and gardens, stone and archaeological sites... He seeks suspended time and embraces contemplative photography. Jean-Christophe Ballot was awarded the distinction of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2018. He lives and works in Paris.
For the artist Jean-Christophe Ballot, the "ressacs I, II, and III" are tumultuous landscapes, the stage for conflicting emotions or simply mental images. Being closest to the breaking waves, he captures the movement, the grand swinging motion of the world described by John Cage, a cosmic choreography that dances. With his "Paysages arrêtés après le ressac" (Landscapes at rest after the breakers), we return to calm and tranquility. The ressac (backwash) remains trapped in the puddles on the beach. Time suspended.
All the photographs were taken in Seine-Maritime in 2020 and 2021, in the region of Saint-Valéry-en-Caux where the artist resides.