LUCY BESSON

Authentic Portraits

There is no more interesting subject to explore than the human personality, the “humanscape.”

“Lucy Besson is an incredible artist, and a photographer who knows how to capture the slightest undertones and vibrations of the human soul. This ability is central to her work as a portraitist.Her philosophical worldview and interest in self-analysis translate in her works into exceptional attention to the inner world of her models. Each model is an individual, an ‘object’ she handles with extreme care, capturing the moment where the person feels at ease and acts naturally. In Lucy’s work, a delicate touch—sensitivity towards the human, the emotional—coexists with a classical preference for harmonious form and proportion, an academic approach to the creation of the image, pictorial space and colour combinations. Rejecting any narrative elements, such as interiors or attributes, she depicts her models against abstract backgrounds that create around them a special space, or surround them with a kind of aura. This allows Besson to blur the markers of the social and bring into the foreground pure human essence, refracted through her own artistic vision. ‘The eyes are the most important element in a portrait,’- Lucy says. ‘They are the centre of one’s individual energy. Only through the eyes  can one reach out and touch the human soul!’

​- Julia Matveeva, art-historian, curator of collections, MOMMA/RU

How Lucy works on commissioned photographic portraits, you can read in the book “Catching the Soul”.