Trained at the prestigious Beaux-Arts and a member of the renowned Tendance Floue collective since 1996, Lopparelli belongs to a generation of photographers who view their craft not merely as documentation, but as a fragmentary form of writing—a way to express the world without attempting to summarize it completely.
His breakthrough project, "Paysages Éphémères" (1990), documented the silent collapse of Lorraine's steel industry. Rather than approaching the subject as a nostalgic observer, Lopparelli positioned himself as a wanderer among ruins, bearing witness to the transition from one world to another. This early work established his signature visual language: dense black and white imagery, unapologetically grainy textures, and ghost-like structures. For Lopparelli, it's the remnants that speak most powerfully—the interstices of the visible, the presence of absence.
Throughout his career, he has explored peripheral zones both geographic and psychological. His series "Quel Cirque?" took viewers backstage at traditional circuses, while "Garde à Vue" examined the carceral world of zoos. "Electrotopia" captured the vibrant rituals of electronic music culture, and his work in extreme landscapes—Iceland, Antarctica, and the French Southern Territories—shows humanity seemingly vanishing only to be reborn.
For Lopparelli, photography serves as a threshold, a pivot point, a stage of tension between memory and collapse, between documentary and dreamscape. His approach is never frontal; instead, he drifts, delves, and resists surface-level interpretation. He doesn't simply capture images—he listens to them.
Lopparelli's photographic process resembles writing poetry or dreaming a film. He extracts from reality its shadows, silences, and suspended flashes. In defiance of today's visual oversaturation, he champions slowness, minimalism, and inner resonance.
His latest book, "From Arthur to Zanzibar," continues this sensitive journey, blending geographical wandering with literary introspection as a photographic homage to Arthur Rimbaud. Far from being a visual biography, the book functions as a mental dérive—a series of echoes between landscapes traversed by the poet and those inhabited by the photographer.
To encounter Philippe Lopparelli is to meet a demanding photographic mind guided by intuition, duration, and rare humility before the world. It means accepting that images aren't meant to reassure us, but to move us.
In an extensive questionnaire, Lopparelli reveals intimate details about his artistic journey and philosophy:
His first photographic trigger came in 1986 at a limestone quarry in his village in Lorraine. When asked about his inspiration, he cites Ralph Eugene Meatyard as the image-maker who most influences him. The photograph he wishes he had taken? "One of an albatross in flight."
The image that moved him most profoundly was Stanley Greene's photograph during the Chechen war showing a woman's corpse shot by Russians, with her cat watching over her. Conversely, Brent Stirton's photograph of a crucified gorilla made him angry—though he's quick to clarify that his anger targets the poachers who killed the animal, not the photographer or those giving the gorilla a final tribute.
A key image in his personal pantheon is simply "a train in the Carpathians." His childhood photographic memory involves a photo of himself bundled up for winter, holding a polar bear-shaped piggy bank. The image that haunts him isn't a photograph at all, but Goya's painting "Saturn Devouring His Son."
When discussing images that changed the world, Lopparelli points to "Blue Marble," the first photograph of Earth taken during the 1972 Apollo 17 mission. The image that changed his personal world was a 1961 black and white photograph by Ralph Eugene Meatyard showing a child screaming through a door ajar.
If money were no object, he would own Rodin's "The Gates of Hell." He believes curiosity makes a good photographer, and that the secret to a perfect image, if one exists, is that "it retains a sense of magic."
Interestingly, when asked whom he'd like to photograph or be photographed by, his answer to both questions is "no one." His indispensable photography book is Josef Koudelka's "Gypsies," specifically the 2011 edition.
Lopparelli had no camera as a child, but today he uses a variety of equipment: Leica M6, Mamiya 6, Pentax Espio Mini, Holga 120, and Fuji X100F. His favorite way to disconnect from work is gardening, and he describes his current relationship with imagery as "rather ambiguous."
He considers his greatest quality to be imaginative thinking. His latest whim involved asking Gilles Coulon to bring him local press from Zanzibar to wrap his book for subscribers. If he could feature an image on a new banknote, he would choose a tree.
The job he would never want? Prison guard. His greatest professional extravagance was "working in black and white with a Holga for Géo magazine."
Lopparelli believes photography can change collective perception of events or eras, "if it remains in its context." Regarding social media's influence on contemporary photography, he observes that "oversaturation leads to repetition." The Instagram account he recommends following is Tendance Floue.
The last thing he did for the first time was driving a hybrid car. A successful photo, in his view, is "an image that retains its mystery—universal and timeless." What he seeks most in an image is "time" itself.
He distinguishes photography from art photography by "the intended recipient." The culture he dreams of discovering is Borneo, while the place he never tires of is "the Carpathians in winter." His greatest regret? "Shooting in color on my second trip to the French Southern and Antarctic Lands."
His preferences are clear: black and white over color, natural light over artificial. He considers Prague the most photogenic city. When asked whether he would photograph God or take a selfie with Him if God existed, Lopparelli responds, "Neither, because He is everywhere."
For his dream dinner, he would gather "my extended family and friends." The image that best represents today's world, he believes, is "a flooded city." If he had to start over professionally, he would "probably become a forest ranger."
His final words of wisdom? "Do less, to do better."
