Frédéric Lebain

Fred is at the root of Portraits de Villes.

He was the first one to put his blind trust in us, on the basis of a half-finished layout. When I first called Fred, the collection didn’t exist yet. Vanessa Atlan, who decided to do Naples, suggested I call him to complete our first series of four books. He said yes immediately and we were off.

He was certainly the best-known photographer we worked with on the first edition and his confidence gave us strength. We are extremely grateful to him for that. He already had an idea in mind when we first spoke, he wanted to go back to Tokyo and shoot automatic beverage vendor machines like Sugimoto; at night, at slow shutter speed, on film.

His singular and non-exhaustive work on Tokyo provided a strong direction for future artists working on Portraits de Villes.

Antoine Ricardou