Capturing dreams in pictures with Etienne Francey

Can you tell us a bit about how you became a photographer? And tell us something about your pictures.

From the age of 8, I was fascinated by the world of cinema and cameras. I bought my first camera in 2006 after a holiday camp called "Hollywood", where we shot films. Initially I filmed my family and friends from my neighbourhood. It was really the technical side that interested me, I didn't think at all about the artistic side.

One day I was out in the woods and saw a green woodpecker in a tree. I wanted to film it, but in the end the result was so bad that I went back the next few days in the hope of improving my shot. And I've never stopped going back. It was my first shot of an animal. Very quickly, I tried to obtain some blur in my backgrounds, but the small camcorder didn't technically allow me to do that. So I bought myself a camera. It was the most accessible solution for achieving blur.

When I started filming nature, and then photographing it, I went to my grandfather's house for a few days to learn photography techniques and also to learn the names of the birds. My grandfather was an amateur photographer. He taught me a lot about the technical side of photography.

Photo: Etienne Francey

Please share something about your images. What is your special interest? How do you choose the colors, composition, themes etc.? 

In the end, the subject is of very little importance to me. I want to convey an emotion, an atmosphere, but also to experiment with new things. I'm very sensitive to the interplay of colours. Often, nature is just a pretext for creating compositions of shapes and colours. I'm not looking for the perfect image, but to convey my vision, my view of nature. I try rather to put my dreams into images, which is not an easy thing to do. They are constant questions. And my main inspiration is still painting. At the moment, I'm working a lot on the notion of movement and the distortions it can cause.

Photo: Etienne Francey

How do you get inspired? And what inspires you the most? Films, books, or magazines? Or what surrounds you?   

I use Instagram a lot for inspiration. It's very practical to be able to pin publications. But I make sure that my source of inspiration doesn't revolve solely around this social network, because it's only a small percentage of the world. I love leafing through photo books. The contact with paper is priceless, and a sequence of images tells a different story to one viewed on a screen. I also try not to draw my inspiration solely from photography. I like to start from a painting or illustration to create an image, and think about how to convert the look of a painting into a photograph. I find it exciting and it opens up new perspectives.

Photo: Etienne Francey

What was your first camera?

My first camera was a Nikon D40x with an 18-55 mm lens. Today, I work with Nikon, but also with Fujifilm and Phase One.

What else should we know about you?  

I was born in 1997 in Fribourg, Switzerland. I graduated from the Vevey School of Photography in 2019 and work as a freelance photographer mainly in the commercial or editorial field (landscape, product, object). I have been represented by the Margot de Roquefeuil agency in Paris since 2023.

My next exhibition will be at the Espace Jean Tinguely - Niki de Saint-Phalle in Fribourg (20.09.2024 - 22.06.2025).