photographer Thiery Beyne

We met photographer Thiery Beyne in the Grand Palais Ephemere, during Art Capital, where he is presenting one of his famous Parisian waiters, under François Fasnibay’s curation. His black and white work is imbued by his former advertising art director knowhow, a career he mastered in Paris while developing a passion for photography.

This emblematic Parisian work is a homecoming.  When he left the world of communication to finaly devote himself solely to travel and photography, in 1995, he left for a discovery trip to Asia. Since then, he has travelled through India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Singapore and of course Vietnam, his favourite. 

For almost 25 years now, he has been criss-crossing this magnificent country and photographing it from north to south in its most remote corners. Married to a Vietnamese woman from Hué, Thiery and his wife Giang are part of French NGOs that have allowed them to get closer to the Vietnamese daily life and its authenticity. 

For 4 years I have been travelling through the Parisian cafés in search of our “authentic” waiters, those still and always dressed in their traditional aprons, their white shirts, their limonadiers carried with pride in the pocket of their black waistcoats. Not to be noticed is the concept and the main idea of my photographic work, to take a snapshot, to capture the gestures, the dexterity, the skill with which they work, always in a vertigo of speed, while we, the customers, are quietly sitting sipping our little black. These men and women are, for the most part, the affable ambassadors of their houses, taking care of the hospitality of the establishment, playing with verbal expressions that belong only to them. Without them, Paris would not be Paris, so tip your hat!

Thiery Beyne