TITLE: Chinese Shadow

Black tit Hautes-Vosges France

AUTHOR: pierre colin (France)

Pierre Colin does not define himself as a pure naturalist photographer, his approach is located halfway between reporting on nature and aesthetics. If shooting requires significant technical knowledge of the specific environment in which it takes place, Pierre Colin's work goes far beyond. The constant interest in the staging requires going beyond the simple opportunistic cliché: special care is given to the choice of foreground, background, perspective, the balance of contrasts, the incongruity of colors. For the salon photographer it is elementary and banal, the naturalist, he must do it in nature unfavorable to studio procedures. The result is a production by which nature imitates art.

Born in 1969 in France, Pierre colin distinguished himself early on by his pronounced taste for truancy. Already there is the desire to see without being seen, to play hide and seek in the forest. This interest in running away probably comes from early childhood journeys: He entered the Longside Primary School in Aberdeen (Scotland) at 5 years old and there followed a series of residencies abroad: in Great Britain, in Holland, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, Sweden and Denmark, at 15 he has already traveled to many countries, his father Christian Colin, land surveyor, becomes responsible for major projects in the pipeline sector. With his mother, Marie-France, Pierre stays around the world according to the changes.


Pierre Colin improved his skills at the School of Image and Applied Arts in the Impression of Epinal. He worked successively for the written press, the audiovisual sector, on pipeline laying sites in Scotland and Malaysia. He spent a long time in the Americas between Peru, Florida, Quebec and the Dominican Republic. He will draw from this last destination his first work. A second volume will follow after after his return to the Vosges mountains. Pierre Colin then turned more clearly to naturalist photography.

Photography in a natural environment involves techniques, knowledge, skills identical to those of hunting: discreet recognition, remote observation, tracking, reading of footprints, exploration of excrement, identification of sounds, songs and cries. You also have to be a botanist, worry about the climate, the topography. From this preparatory work follows a strategy which revolves around three options: fixed mounting, light mounting and billebaude. Pierre Colin likes the solitude, the expectation and the excitement linked to the search for the precise moment that will produce the ideal shot.