Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, May 8, 2026 : Camille Brasselet, a French emerging artist, photographer (#2521)

Friday, May 8, 2026

Artist of the Day, May 8, 2026 : Camille Brasselet, a French emerging artist, photographer (#2521)

Born in Normandy, Camille Brasselet (1997) currently lives and works in Lyon. She showed an early interest in the visual arts. This passion first began with a keen interest in the fine arts. She studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Saint-Brieuc. She experimented with different media, including painting, sculpture and printmaking.

Camille Brasselet also spent a lot of time in the school’s photo lab. There she refined her practice and realise that it was through this technique that she expressed herself best. She then studied photography for three years at the École de Condé in Lyon. She started out as a photographer even before graduating.

Her work soon attracted attention. She has won awards including the FotoFever Prize for her “À côté” series in 2020. In 2021, she was a finalist for the HSBC Prize for Photography. The following year, she was awarded the “Le19M de la Photographie des Métiers d’Arts” prize as part of the Picto Prize for Fashion Photography.

Brasselet’s photographs are populated by women, often with their backs to the camera or with their faces hidden. The artist admits: “I’m more interested in composition, shapes and attitudes than in expressions”. She works on postures, on the mystery of each of her characters, who are “in the in-between, that state where nothing happens, but at the same time everything happens“. These figures often appear alone, separated from the others. Reflection on solitude is at the heart of Camille Brasselet’s work, as are expectations and our place in the world.

Brasselet works with her family (her sisters, her grandmother), friends and relatives. Under her gaze, the model becomes a photographic character. She also feels the need for a bond, for intimacy. She creates it when she doesn’t know the person she’s talking to. She explains: “When I choose a model I don’t know, I look for the natural, innocent and strange side that can be seen in a face, an expression or a movement.” The body is a theme that runs through all her work.

Color is a very important part of Brasselet’s photographic work. Her chromatic preferences are reflected in the choice of costumes for her models, accessories and sets. The colours are natural (pastel blue and white swimming pool lockers, a powder pink wall and a green-tiled bathroom), not the result of post-production retouching.

As well as color, light is also essential to Brasselet’s photographic universe. She prefers natural light and likes to seize the opportunities offered by a large bay or French window. However, she also works on the lighting. In the “Untitled stories” series, for example, set in rooms with rich wood panelling or in a row, the apparent simplicity of the light is the result of lighting comparable to that used by theatre or film professionals.

Brasselet’s contemporary photographs are full of references to designers whose worlds resonate with her own. They have inspired her career and her work, in terms of setting, color and atmosphere. The flat tones of color and the silhouettes waiting around the zinc counter of a bar or at the window of Edward Hopper’s paintings call out to the contemporary artist. She appreciates suspended pictorial moments, where there is often neither before nor after.

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