Born in 1966 in France, photography became a passion for me as early as 1986, in particular, shots of natural landscapes. I'm interested in the shapes, the volumes, and the substances that make up a landscape. I use a 4x5 inch chamber to photograph nature just as it is - a vision of nature which is free from all human, social or cultural elements, and based essentially on a choice of subject which will express the purity of line, and render the presence of the substance and the light, in an attempt to procure for the spectator an emotion as intense as I experience while I'm taking the photograph.

Web site Christophe Cassegrain

When I arrive in a village, I never have my camera over my shoulder. My material is in a back-pack. I go and sit somewhere in the centre of the village, and, when a child comes near, I do a few magic tricks. My box of magic tricks is also part of my photo equipment. I love magic as it gives me the possibility of offering something that is instantly simple, real and marvellous. Little by little the village people surround me. Everyone has great fun. Sometimes it goes on for hours. I always get a kick out of it. It's only when my tricks have been repeated and repeated, ten times over, that I think about taking any photos.

Web site Olivier Föllmi

Looking at his photographs, one suspects that Michel Medinger has time on his mind. Time, for most of us, is something we experience in various ways but visualize only by what it has touched—a wrinkled face, a decaying tree. What is time after all? Untitled, 1988A lifetime is an interval marked by the occurrence of a birth; Medinger's occurred in 1941 in Luxembourg. The international recognition he would receive later for his remarkable photographs came first to him as a 23-year oldsprinter who was quick enough to compete in the 800 meter timed event in Tokyo's 1964 Olympic games.

From 1979 to 1997 the French photographer Stéphane Duroy traveled constantly around Europe. He primarily wanted to understand how a civilized continent could have so surrendered itself to war and violence. He found the best illustration of this antithesis during the Cold War in Berlin. Here he perceived the two faces of the German people, 'the one extremely refined, the other that of a monster'. It made him decide to research further in the DDR and the rest of the East Bloc, where the advanced Weimar culture and Auschwitz could exist alongside each other. There he encountered a region where time seemed to have stood still. Duroy endedL'EUROPE DU SILENCE (2000) in his homeland, France, in the landscape that still bears the scars of the massive slaughter that took place there during the First World War. Stéphane Duroy (Tunisia/France, b. 1948) has done series on Berlin before and after the fall of the Wall, and on British miningregions. He has twice won the first prize at World Press Photo. Duroy is represented by Agence VU.

Clergue was born in Arles. From the age of 7, Lucien Clergue learned to play the violin. Several years later, his teacher revealed to him that he had nothing more to teach him. From a family of shopkeepers, he could not pursue further studies in a conservatory. In 1949, he learned the rudiments of photography. Four years later, at a corrida in Arles, he showed his photographs to Pablo Picasso who, though subdued, demanded to see others. Within a year and a half, young Clergue worked with the goal of sending photos to Picasso. During this period ,he worked on a series of photographs of traveling entertainers, acrobats and harlequins, the "Saltimbanques". He also worked on a series whose subject was carrion. On 4 November 1955, Lucien Clergue visited Picasso in Cannes. Their friendship lasted near 30 years until the death of the Master. The book, Picasso my friend retraces the important moments of their relation. Clergue has taken many photographs of the gypsies of southern France, and he was instrumental in propelling the guitarist Manitas de Plata to fame. In 1968 he founded, along with his friend Michel Tournier the Rencontres d’Arles photography festival which is held in Arles in July.

Miguel da Silva Paranhos do Rio Branco was born in 1946 in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain. Rio Branco is a painter, photographer, filmmaker, and creator of multimedia installations who currently lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. He worked extensively in Europe and the Americas since the beginning of his career in 1964 and has an exhibition in Bern, Switzerland.

Web site Miguel Rio Branco