Patrick Faigenbaum

Since receiving international acclaim in the mid-1980s for his portraits of Italian aristocratic families, Parisian photographer Patrick Faigenbaum (born 1954) has continued to explore the expressive power of portraiture. This survey of his work features 30 black-and-white and 21 color photographs.

Patrick Faigenbaum (born 1954) is a Paris-based portrait photographer. He studied painting and drawing from 1968 until 1973 when he started to explore photography, influenced by the work of Richard Avedon, W. Eugene Smith and Bill Brandt. He began by taking portraits of his friends and family, eventually documenting a wide array of Parisian society and Italian aristocracy. His portraiture of these years features frontal figures arranged to emphasize their relationship to their surroundings, while his portraits of Italian aristocratic families reference more historical painterly portraiture, pointing to the history of these families. More recently, Faigenbaum has also explored still lifes. Patrick Faigenbaum: L'Eclairement contains 90 photographs that represent the core of the photographer's black-and-white work, most of which are previously unpublished.