David Nissen : CINEMATOGRAPHY

Best known for his camerawork with directors Jacques Audiard and Christophe Gans, various big-brand TV adverts and his music videos for French singers, David Nissen is also an astonishing photographer of land and cityscapes – as this exhibition at the Salon du Panthéon amply demonstrates. Consisting entirely of images from Nissen’s personal collection, the exhibit emphasises the photographer’s remarkable mastery of light and chiaroscuro, as well as his brilliant sense of perspective (notably extracting horizontal and vertical lines from roads, stairs and streetlamps to help structure his photos). The characters he captures – quite often just blurred, anonymous silhouettes in mysterious, foggy settings – have an enigmatic allure about them, in a similar vein to American photographer Todd Hido.

TRANSLATION: HUW OLIVER