The Galerie Françoise Livinec is presenting a comprehensive photography exhibition featuring the work of Matthieu Ricard, coinciding with the release of his new book 'Lumière' (Light) by Allary Éditions. The exhibition showcases sixty photographs, including previously unpublished images, tracing more than half a century of meditative life through Ricard's lens.
Ricard, a renowned Buddhist monk and photographer, describes his artistic journey as a lifelong quest for light. "For sixty years, my photographic journey has been a quest for light," Ricard writes. "The images impose themselves in the evidence of an instant where place, beings, and light come together. For me, photography is a tribute to the beauty of beings and the world, a way to share wonder and restore confidence in our common humanity by reminding us of our intimate connection with nature and sentient beings."
The photographer's fascination with light began in childhood, when he would play with capturing reflections. At age twelve, his first camera sparked his interest in seeking shadows and contrasts. By fifteen, thanks to André Fatras, he discovered wildlife photography, and nature became his field of exploration. Some of his early images were soon published, marking the beginning of his photographic career.
Ricard's travels to the Himalaya, India, Nepal, and Bhutan, along with twenty-one visits to Tibet, transformed photography into an exercise of attention and patience. "With just a few rolls of Kodachrome film for an entire year, each shot had to be justified," he explains. The arrival of digital photography in 2000 proved liberating, allowing him to experiment freely to better capture unique moments.
"To photograph is to welcome light in all its metamorphoses," Ricard reflects. "It reveals itself in a smile, in the reflection of a summit, in the silhouette of a horseman lost in immensity." High altitudes, where colors intensify, became privileged locations for his work. The immense inspiration offered by his spiritual masters and the grandiose landscapes, inhabited for centuries by spiritual fervor, provided him with the most precious and intense moments of his life.
Ricard also finds beauty in minute details: tree bark, fractal patterns of moss or sand, infinite reflections of the infinitely large in the infinitely small. This search aligns with his meditative practice, as contemplating a flower or mountain always opens the mind to infinity. Photography connects with Buddhism, which conceives the ultimate nature of mind as the union of the luminosity of knowledge and the emptiness of inherent existence.
Buddhist texts speak of the "three bodies" of Enlightenment: the dharmakaya (absolute purity), the sambhogakaya (light deployed in five colors representing five wisdoms), and the nirmanakaya (active compassion). The colors of the spectrum, like the five Buddha families, are expressions of this fundamental luminosity. Thus, each burst of light in the world serves as a reminder of our profound nature.
Portraiture represents a quest for inner light for Ricard. He has focused on faces of people whose daily lives he shared in Tibet or Bhutan, and especially those of his spiritual masters. "With them, each photo requires respect and discretion, as it is sometimes more appropriate to simply remain in the presence of their wisdom," he notes. However, his desire to bear witness to these unique moments drove him to capture these gazes. A successful portrait reveals not only an appearance but also that secret radiance residing within each person.
Photography, like meditation, reminds us of impermanence – everything passes and transforms. "To photograph is to attempt to distill the essence of a moment destined to disappear," Ricard explains. "It's not about freezing time, but offering a luminous trace." Through these images, he tries to transmit not only visions of landscapes or faces, but an experience of communion with light – both the light that passes through us and the light toward which we go. As his mother said at the end of her life: "We do not become dust again, we become light again."
The artist will donate profits from his photographic sales to his humanitarian association Karuna-Shechen. The exhibition runs from October 10 to November 15, 2025, with an opening reception on October 9 starting at 6 PM at Galerie Françoise Livinec, located at 24 rue de Penthièvre in Paris's 8th arrondissement.
