About Les Chevaliers Photographes
An unconventional couple in life, an improvised duo of photographers, the Chevaliers Photographes initially had a simple desire to share their wild love, artistic, and sexual adventure through photography, which they experience together and with their lovers. Bodies intertwine, lounge, taste, kiss, offer themselves, connect, unleash.
They then narrate the world – their world – a sort of magical bubble in which they regularly find themselves. Tireless explorers, thirsty for new adventures to live and relive; pleasure enthusiasts, whimsical hedonists, somewhat poetic, they testify – as an act that is at least committed if not explicitly political – to what they bring to each other, to the happiness they share, defying their own (or our?) prohibitions, questioning sexuality and the taboos it evokes, as they involve themselves in their own photos, and dream of an even greater world where everyone can live in their own way, in total freedom, proudly.
It is in this state of mind that Les Chevaliers Photographes began working together in 2018. In 2020, they joined the Lusted Men catalog and organized their first exhibition in two chapters: “Secret” and “Censored.” Some of these photos were also exhibited at the Concorde Art Gallery, while they received an honorable mention at the ND Awards for the photo “Le Mont Fuji.” In 2022, their series “Les mains” was selected for the Love&Sex Festival (held online due to the pandemic), and two photos from their series “Secret” were featured. They also hosted a biweekly Space Twitter show with Nora Gaspard, focusing on male bisexuality and male sexuality.
Aware of the constant censorship they face, they decide to take hold of the subject and in 2023, they write a manifesto for a positive and liberated vision of sexuality. They revisit their series “Censored,” which becomes “69-Censored,” and they censor their own works, thus raising questions about how sexuality is often perceived and offering a different semantic approach.
In parallel, they develop the series “Parenthèse” (Parenthesis), like a moment of calm where bodies extract themselves from a too brutal world; “L’Hexagone des fantasmes” (The Hexagon of Fantasies), where they stage the possible fantasies of a couple; “Quand un dino rencontre une licorne” (When a Dino Meets a Unicorn), a fairy tale about the unlikely encounter of two beings who are completely different…
Alongside all this work, as the 2020 pandemic evokes an ongoing cataclysm for them, they embark on a new environmentally-focused project, photographing urban and natural landscapes that evoke a “Kataclysm_e.” The captivating beauty of these ruined landscapes reminds us of the fragility and resilience of nature, as well as our responsibility as human beings. Yet, these on-site photos also reveal glimpses of another possible world because they challenge lifestyles and individual and collective choices that have led to this critical situation. Selected for the 2022 Emois Photographiques Festival, these photos are publicly exhibited for the first time, and they are nominated for the 7th Emois Photographiques Prize.