Claudia - New York Woman magazine 1987 ■ Nur - Grey magazine 2011
"For the past three decades while the world saw dreams in its sleep, Jean-Francois Lepage was seeing them while wide awake. Translating his visions into captivating photographs, drawings, paintings, and collages, Lepage stops time to wander in the surreal landscapes of the subconscious moments caught in between the conscious movements of the individual.
Working out of Paris, France, Lepage has created a hybrid body of work that laces together cinema, surrealism, and haute-couture. His subjects stand lonesome, numb to their own high fashion glamour, deeply gazing into a void that seduces their hidden souls with an ecstasy of solitude and the eventual promise of death. The images, at first site, appear to be carefully crafted with dramatic artificial lighting, highly saturated color choices, exaggerated wardrobe and makeup styling, and the flawlessly placed models. But when one begins to engage with the images with further pursuit for meaning, one realizes that what stands before them is purity. Past the complex exterior of each composition, Lepage captures the moments of truth that expose the individual more than they, themselves, can understand. A subtle movement or gesture completes each frame to the highest point of perfection. The effect is both soothing and physically disturbing.
Lepage has set himself apart as both a fashion photographer and a visual artist with his innovative approach of merging the two worlds into his own conceptual universe of image making. With the use of drawing and deconstructed collage, Lepage further pushes his work to explore his insights on individuality, mortality, and the unspoken forces which guide the sublime emotional instincts of the human mind.
The haunting work of Jean-Francois Lepage speaks the universal language of solitude, self-reflection, and the uncontrollable desire to find beauty and comfort in the mysterious truth behind life, death, and everything else in between."
Darya Kosilova - The Lab Magazine - June 2012
Jean-François Lepage was born in Paris, France in 1960, his photography career began in 1980.
His early editorial work was featured in magazines such as Dépêche Mode, 20 ans, Jill Magazine, Marie-Claire, Vogue Uk... and Condé Nast Publications in Italy.
Since, his photographs have been published in many international magazines:
AnOtherMan Magazine | All Magazine | A Magazine [Curated by] | Blink | Bmm Magazine | Common & Sense | Double | Exit Magazine | Grey Magazine | GQ | Harper's Bazaar | Amica Magazine | Mixte | Numero | Nylon | Purple | Self Service | 7000 Magazine | Sleek | Stiletto | TAR Magazine | The Lab Magazine | Twill | Vogue | Wall Paper |
His most recent exhibitions are:
"Memories from the future" at the 28th International Festival of Fashion and Photography of Hyères, France
April 28th - May 26th, 2013
"MoonLight" at the Bangkok Art & Culture Center (bacc) in Bangkok, Thailand
February 18th - May 31th, 2011
Jean-François Lepage has also collaborated with fashion and cosmetics brands such as:
Dior | Comme des Garçons | Gilles Rosiers | Jil Sander | Lanvin | Laura Urbinati |
Levi's | Masaki Matsushima | Nina Ricci | Repetto | Rue du Mail | Shu Uemura | Vanessa Bruno |
And department stores:
Le Bon Marché | Le Printemps |
Jean-Francois has four children Vincent, Nuage, Norma and Saule, he lives in Paris.
The other side of the dream #11 - 2008
Moonlight exhibition - "Jean-François Lepage has a very different approach to fashion photos. His approach is similar to that of the Plastic arts and illustrates a significant change in Fashion photography. Jean-François Lepage is one of those photographers who have reinvented this genre. His work at the intersection of painting, cinema and contemporary photography, represents a very different way of seeing the world of fashion and is truly exceptional."
Cultural Section, Embassy of France - February 2011 - Bangkok
Metamorphosis 1998
Shaking the soul - Jean-François Lepage, photographer of sophisticated and disquieting images, vestals of a mysterious surreality.
The photography of Jean-François Lepage reproduces finite and decadent traits. Female souls are models in a world whose contours are drawn by the human pen. Paradoxical stage sets echo an elegant and sophisticated fashion, which shows its infinitesimal plasticity, capable of invading the eyes with matter and fabrics but of preparing the mind to the surreal. Lepage’s art is complex, as it transcends the world of fashion, touches upon graphics and painting, calls to mind cinema to finally reach the philosophy of existence.
There is a “je ne sais pas quoi” that is disquieting in the “finiteness” of those static, lonely bodies lost in environments that go beyond the stage set to describe the solitude of the human soul. Artificial lights, irealistic, “wan” colors stress the repetition compulsion of a human fashion that enhances the senses in hopes of a free association of ideas.
Photography is an authentic vestal, priestess of the possible, sophisticated, visible but which wants to offer a glimpse of the door to the impossible.
Lepage’s images are far from the categorical imperative of reinventing life but encourage the observer to free the imagination.
The concept of woman as an inspirational muse, custodian of the mystery of seduction is abandoned in favor of transformist bodies, without sexuality, headless. “Avatars” that allow access to a mysterious Surreality, sinister and magic at time which is suggested as a possible safe haven.
This are post-modern, unobvious images; they are subversive, nearly troublesome, never natural yet so fitting in all historical periods.
Lepage evades the “politically correct” mentality and plays with fragments. He cuts directly from the slide or the negative using Staples to fix the pieces together. Serialized faces and bodies, as if we were dealing with a non-identity, a quasi-identity, as if to justify that the human being is a never-ending work in progress.
A treasure hunt that wants to overcome the border between genders, times, languages to reach something surprisingly universal, undoubtedly less realistic of that which is seen but paradoxically truer. Jean-François Lepage has a great talent and ability to represent complexity in a sincere, nearly poignant way."
Anita Zechender - Image in Progress magazine - January 2012