Laurent Elie Badessi

Laurent Elie Badessi (born November 27, 1964, in Avignon, France) is a French photographer and artist based in New York City.

Badessi frequently uses symbolism, mythology, and historical and cultural references in his work.

The study of trust that develops between the photographer and the sitter and the exploration of the power of the photographic medium on people, are both fundamental vectors in his artistic quest.

His photographs often addresses subtle and relevant questions on social, political and cultural issues, such as the relationship with nudity, religion, the environment, war or the fragility of life.

He is a fourth-generation photographer.

Badessi the son of French photographer Elie Badessi and Catalan Maria Louisa Rovira Font was raised in France.

Badessi was first interested in painting and filmmaking, but he chose photography as his chief form of artistic expression.

While studying language and communication sciences with a focus on journalism and advertising at the Université des Lettres in Avignon, he experimented with photography.

He spent hours taking photos of people and soon, started to draw attention to his work by winning prestigious photography contests such as the Guy Laroche Drakkar Prize.

Before moving to Paris, Badessi's first noteworthy photograph was published in Paris's Vogue Hommes magazine.

To deepen his study of these two observations, he decided to move to Paris in the mid-1980s and enrolled in a class of photography at the Université de Paris VIII.

For his M.A. thesis, he created a project entitled "Ethnological Fashion Photography" whose focus was to study the impact of photography on a relatively unexplored terrain, using clothing as the main communication tool with his subjects.

The black-and-white portrait was exhibited as part of the Condé Nast retrospective at the Centre Photographique et d'Audiovisuel de la Ville de Paris (1986), along with photographs by Irving Penn, Bruce Weber, Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin, and Annie Leibovitz that had been taken throughout the years for the company's various prestigious titles.

Badessi became fascinated with the interaction that develops between the photographer and the sitter during a photo session, as well as the psychological impact of the photography medium on the sitter.

Using the method of "La photographie négociées" (Negotiated Photography) introduced to him by photographer/teacher Michel Séméniako, Badessi, spent several months over the course of two years (1987–1988), in Niger, Africa, taking photographs and studying the impact of the medium on isolated tribes, that had never or very rarely been exposed to photography.

He was able to finance this project thanks to the prominent "Bourse de l'aventure" prize that he won (1988), which was funded by several sponsors including Fuji Color, VSD magazine, and France Inter.

Soon, Badessi's well-polished and unique images started to be seen frequently in photography magazines and exhibitions.

It did not take long before he was hired to create images for advertising high-end fashion brands and perfumes.

Thanks to these commercial assignments, Badessi has a steady income at an early age and was able to pursue his artistic quest and further explore the photography medium around the world.

To expend his career, Badessi moved to the United States in the early 1990s.

Dividing his time between commercial and personal work, he began focusing on artistic nudes, which he had already experimented with during his early stages behind the camera.

Since nude work requires the deepest degree of trust between the photographer and the sitter, he felt that this phase was necessary to further evaluate the psychological impact of photography on people.

In addition to his primary focus, Badessi was also interested in the relationship that builds between the photographer and the model during a nude photo-session.

Badessi has always been spiritually close to nature.

Before the organic products trend, he was well aware that we should respect our environment because we are part of it.

He believes that whatever we do badly to nature will come back to us at some point.

In between assignments and with this philosophy in mind, Badessi dedicated ten years taking nudes in dramatic landscapes, showing how close we are to nature.

In 2000, the prestigious Swiss publishing company Edition Stemmle, released his first book, SKIN, which featured a foreword written by Sondra Gilman, Founder and Chairperson of the photography committee at the Whitney Museum in New York.

A few solo shows presenting some of this work had previously taken place in Paris, but in the years to follow the publication of the book, more exhibitions opened in the United States and abroad.

At the same time, his photographs became part of numerous important collections and he received several prestigious awards and grants.

During this transitional phase of his career, Badessi decided to focus on the fine art aspects of photography and only accepted commercial assignments that would grant him total control over the images.

The campaign he produced for Charles Jourdan (2004) is the perfect example of Badessi's desire to create and nurture an image from its concept to its final phase.

The success of the Charles Jourdan project was a great challenge, because for two decades, Guy Bourdin had generated a large amount of stunning photographs for the brand that have become iconic images.

To bring his own vision, Badessi played with eroticism and mythological symbolism, creating memorable visuals that are in the permanent collection of le Musée de la Publicité – Les Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

That same year, one of the photographs "The Abduction of Ganymede 1" made the headlines for an article in The New York Times.

Focusing on his artistic undertakings considerably boosted Badessi's desire to get closer and closer to total artistic freedom.

Being politically correct—which was a key factor during so many years of working for important brands—was no longer an issue, and he could now translate what he would observe in this world into images without restraint.

Following that philosophy, Badessi created "American Dream, This is not a dream" (2006) a series of portraits based on the propagandist campaigns elaborated in the United States to attract new recruits during the Iraq War.

The project was acclaimed abroad and widely collected, but seen as too controversial in the States at the time because of the tense relationship between many military families and the Government, as a result, the series was not widely exhibited in the States.

"American Dream, This is not a dream" was later selected for the prestigious Arte Laguna Prize and shown at the Venice Arsenal (2011).