"Ranking Joe — Backstage Portrait (Dub Camp 2018)" Photograph - Limited Edition of 10

Antoine Violleau is a French photographer whose work moves between contemplative landscape, symbolic portraiture and urban collage. Based near Nantes, France, he has been working with photography since the early 2000s. His images explore the fragile boundary between reality and inner perception. Inspired by cinema, street culture and documentary photography, Antoine Violleau creates atmospheric works where silence, tension and poetry coexist. His landscapes often evoke a sense of solitude and timelessness, while his portraits reveal the hidden narratives and identities carried by the people he photographs. Having lived several years abroad, including in Jamaica and West Africa, his visual language is deeply influenced by music, especially reggae and dub culture. This experience led him to document key figures of the dub scene, capturing intimate portraits of artists and sound system pioneers. Alongside photography, Antoine Violleau also creates digital collages using fragments of torn advertising posters photographed in urban environments. These works transform street remnants into layered visual compositions reflecting contemporary society, memory and emotional states. His work has been exhibited online and collected internationally. Through a cinematic and expressive visual approach, Antoine Violleau seeks to create images that resonate both visually and emotionally. Artist Statement My work explores the tension between the visible world and the inner landscapes we carry within ourselves. Photography, for me, is not only a way of documenting reality but also a way of revealing the emotional atmosphere that surrounds a place, a face, or a fragment of the urban environment. I am drawn to moments of silence, solitude and ambiguity where the viewer is invited to project their own interpretation. In my landscape series, nature becomes a contemplative space. Mist, light, wind and water create quiet environments that suggest introspection and stillness. These images are not about describing a location but about evoking a state of mind. My portraits explore identity and presence. Whether photographing musicians from the reggae and dub scene or anonymous figures, I am interested in capturing the dignity, strength and complexity of the people I encounter. The portrait becomes a meeting point between two stories. Another part of my work focuses on urban textures.