April 5, 7PM
Institut français de Serbie/ Francuski institut u Srbiji
Knez Mihailova 31, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia

Instinct and terrain are the two premises of French photographer Laurent Baheux. Born in Poitiers in 1970, he began his career by covering international sports events before eventually turning to the subject of animals and wildlife. Since the early 2000s he has been developing a collection of images of nature in a raw monochrome style, dense and contrasted. Like the humanists who roamed the streets to capture the lives of people, Laurent Baheux travels through wild territories to photograph the life of animals.
Without a cage or enclosure, his subjects become individuals expressing in a single moment the power of freedom, the beauty of their personalities, and all the tenderness of their life within a community. Whether the perspective is narrow or without axis, set amidst a grain or a forest, Laurent explores every possibility in order to magnify the animals’ subjectivity rather than simply represent it.

As an activist, the photography is committed to animal welfare and supports initiatives, associations and foundations such as GoodPlanet, Jane Goodall, Cheetaf For Ever, One Voice and L’Aspas. In 2013 he became a good will ambassador for the United Nations Environment Programme and their Wild and Precious anti-poaching campaign. Primarily, it supports actions aimed at protecting wildlife from exploitation. The photographer calls for
the cessation of destructive activities towards animals such as hunting, along with the physical or psychological abuse caused by circuses, zoos and bullfighting.

Praised for their aesthetic strength and authenticity, Laurent’s black and white photos are the subject of various books, publications, exhibitions and lectures, and are regularly displayed in galleries in France and abroad.