BERTHET-AITTOUARES

Combining a demanding gaze with a fine and poetic sensitivity, Antoine Schneck works on his images in series. Since 1999, he has devoted himself to visual photography with an evocative power that cannot leave one indifferent. His passion for encounters is matched only by his tireless curiosity about the world, which is embodied in the form of photographic portraits: from Gypsies to the recumbent figures of Saint-Denis, from Burkinabés to diving suits, nothing that is beautiful or unusual is foreign to him. The living world offers him its share of encounters, such as his famous series Their Dog, currently being shown in China, after stopping off in 2010 at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris. Or the magnificent sequence devoted to venerable olive trees, presented as part of this exhibition which includes twenty-five photographs (between €2,800 and €8,000). Antoine Schneck went to meet these sublime olive trees in the heart of Puglia: "They were my hosts, Ottavio, Gino, Cosimo and the others, as these men who succeed one another from generation to generation to take care of them call them. I waited until nightfall to photograph them, when all the color of the landscape fades, and the olive trees are entirely adorned with silver tones, revealing their mineral forms." V.de M.