Stephan Gladieu was born in 1969, he lives and works in Paris. He began his career as a photographer in 1989, covering the news and the major conflicts that shook the world (the fall of Ceausescu, the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans, etc.). During these years working on feature stories, he developed a personal style based on portraits, combining aesthetic research and rigorous documentary work.
Today, he focuses mainly on personal series dealing with historical, anthropological or sociological facts that are not well-known to the general audience (the Hereros genocide in Namibia, the secret societies of Benin, the daily life of North Koreans, etc.).
Stephan Gladieu’s photographic approach is based on the quote by Victor Hugo: «Form is the substance that rises to the surface». He develops his work as a portraitist by creating images that are becoming more and more iconic, luminous and offbeat, blurring the lines between fiction and reality. Each of the faces and sceneries he captures compose unique, even magical portraits, of which only Stephan knows the formula.