Christian SILOE

The principal stages of his career

Christian SILOĒ was born on the 2nd July 1954 in the Eure and has taken photographs since he was fifteen years old.
His first fantasy-inspired images have come to play a decisive role in the manner in which he composes and produces his photographs, which have featured in more than thirty exhibitions since 1972.
From 2001, the upheaval of nature due to climate change and the potential (positive or negative) mutations of living things through scientific research became the focus of his poetic research.

Family Photos, a portrait of France and its people.

It was the authorities in the Haute-Normandie region that enabled Siloé to turn professional, regularly ordering work from him from 1985. That same year, he met Jacques Falguières, stage director and Manager of the Evreux theatre: this proved to be the beginning of a long collaboration.

In 1985, he began producing portraits of artists and, from 1986, photographs focusing on the family. In 1992, he worked in a neighbourhood in Evreux, with support from the Méga Pobec theatre company. He photographed 400 people and tasted his first solo success. This signalled the start of his lengthy work in the working-class neighbourhoods of France.

In 2006, UNESCO, the magazine RéponsesPhoto and Dupon laboratories awarded him the Special Jury Prize for his work in the neighbourhoods of France at the "vivre ensemble" (living together) event organised in Paris.

To date, Siloé has photographed nearly eleven thousand people in French working-class neighbourhoods.

Nude and the Birth of Art.

Siloé took his first nude photographs in 1987.

A visit to a set of prehistoric caves in the LOT with the engraver Marc- Antoine ORELLANA in April 1991 had a major impact on his work. He definitively rejected the race for innovation in order to fully focus on the artistic and poetic values of his work.

Siloé abandoned the use of natural light, choosing rather to "project" signs etched by prehistoric artists in these decorated caves onto his models. This was the beginning of a long collaboration between both artists, which came to an end in 1996.

A dozen exhibitions of this work have been held.

Autumn 2008: Exhibition at the VASCOEUIL Castle Art Centre (Eure)

Public collections:

ARIAPD, Montpellier
Maison de la Culture, Amiens
French National Library
DIV (Interministerial Urban Authority)
ANRU (National Agency for Urban Renovation)
FDAC de l'Orne (Orne Local Contemporary Art Fund)