Vincent Calmel

Born in Geneva, Vincent Calmel has been an independent photographer since 2004, working from his studio in Usine Kugler, an old factory premises located at La Jonction in Geneva. Passionate about cinema, Vincent Calmel considered to make his career in this field. Following this inclination, he took up a photography course. It finally led him to journalistic as well as artistic photography.

Calmel's work is included, among others, in the collections of Hôpital universitaire de Genève, Nicolas Torroni, and The Collection Annette and Peter Nobel. 

The nature of representation and identity has been an important theme in Calmel’s photographs. After a serious motorcycle accident in 2010 left his face disfigured, Calmel underwent reconstructive surgery. While the surgery was successful, learning to recognize himself again and living with a face, which really wasn’t his own deeply impacted Calmel’s perceptions and his art.

His most recent works reference famous classic paintings, placing some of the most recognizable scenes in art history —David’s Marat, Boticelli’s Venus, Millais’s Ophelia —in contemporary settings. Calmel’s sophisticated and sometimes startling images reinterpret these classic works in provocative ways and merge the known and the unexpected.