Planet Circus

Philippe Cibille

A self-taught photographer, Philippe Cibille has devoted 45 years to capturing performances and is on a constant search for perfection, beauty, and emotion. After scouring the festivals in his native Nancy region, he moved to Paris in the 1980s and frequented the capital’s clubs, tirelessly photographing jazz legends for the magazine Jazz Hot.

In 1989, his encounter with the Archaos circus was an artistic earthquake. From that point on, he devoted himself to capturing on film the work of the new contemporary circus.
A fervent defender of this ever-evolving and hybrid art form, Philippe Cibille has an uncanny ability to record the essence of gestures, the magic of shapeshifting bodies, and the very spirit of the shows.

Phillipe Cibille has been exploring the contemporary circus scene for more than three decades and has forged a strong bond with each artist, each company. It is through his poetic eye that we journey into the intimate and the spectacular of more than fifty companies that have made, and continue to make, the contemporary circus a complete art form that is creative, open, and welcoming.

Yohanne Lamoulère & Justine Fournier

Yohanne Lamoulère was born in Nîmes in 1980. After spending her teenage years in the Comoros, she graduated from the ENSP photography school in Arles in 2004. She now lives and works in Marseille.
A member of the Tendance Floue collective and a regular contributor to the BIAC, her favourite themes are the outskirts of cities and the multifaceted nature of insularity. She places the urban world at the heart of her work.
She published Faux Bourgs with Le Bec en l’air in 2018, a compilation of her work on the city of Marseille. She is also a member of the Zirlib collective with director Mohamed El Khatib and is currently preparing her first film, L’œil Noir.

Justine Fournier works as a freelance graphic designer in the cultural sector, and regularly collaborates with photographers on publishing projects. Having always been surrounded by images, she collects all manner of printed material, which she then hangs, stacks, and archives. From this accumulation comes the desire to retain bits and pieces, snippets of stories, forgotten images; she likes to confront them, to divert them so they form a new narrative. In this way, which brings back childhood memories, she finds a delightful means of resisting convention, and opens up a space of freedom of expression with no barriers or limits, open to all forms of inspiration.

Jean Barak

Trained in pottery in the workshop of Maitre Eliane Charlot and then a clinical psychologist, there was nothing that predicted Jean Barak would become a photographer. However, a number of fortuitous encounters in Avignon set the wheels in motion: with street performers looking for volunteers and images, with a Director of the Office de la Culture, with a journalist friend in need of a photographer, with a contemporary dance troupe, and so on and so forth. All these coincidences resulted in an essential need to capture images. He became a stage photographer and he made up for the training he lacked with passion. After all, expertise could be acquired over time, understanding could be gained by exposing his work to the uncompromising judgment of more experienced photographers.

Through the ephemerality of live performance, he captures an aesthetic that is rooted in the enduring nature of the image. He records moments of truth, hidden behind appearances or glances, and delivers photographs imbued with emotion and a sense of travel. Wherever he is, Jean Barak questions the human condition.