François-Marie Banier

This book presents François-Marie Banier's portraits of Parisian construction workers sleeping or at rest in their places of work. Caught in moments of dreaming and escape from their labor, Banier's subjects blend into the soft grey atmosphere of his pictures and seem, if but for a moment, to have escaped the harsher facts of reality. These are candid and tender portraits which continue Banier's practice of photographing strangers he meets throughout Paris. In his words: "To photograph workers asleep on the very ground of their construction site was, once again, to follow the paradoxical lines of being, a solitude embodied in movie heroes who change faces, roles, centuries and sometimes genders, in each of their naps."

François-Marie Banier - Tranquille

With his unique talent for capturing emotions using lenses, colors and words, artist François-Marie Banier inspires both his subjects and viewers to conquérir le rêve (conquer the dream). Vive la Vie is an intimate monograph resulting from a collaboration between Banier and fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg. Based on a series of sessions arranged by von Furstenberg with model Natalia Vodianova, the images are layered with visual and emotional complexity. By combining his various skills--photography, painting and writing--into individual artworks, François-Marie Banier creates narratives that compel both the eye and the mind. Vodianova exposes her true, unmasked self, creating a blank canvas on which raw womanhood is revealed, far from the stereotypes of fashion photography.

François-Marie Banier

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