Jacques Torregano

Jacques Torregano was born in Charente-Maritime. After two years of mathematics at the University of Talence, he chose photography by entering the Louis Lumière School of Photography in Paris.

After several assistantships (photo novels, advertising and aerial photography), he turned to press photography out of passion. He then collaborated with Liberation, Nouvel Obs and Le Point. At the beginning of the Mitterrand years, he founded a press collective with other independent photographers, and for him began the major reportage with Poland and the countries of the East.

The need for travel obliges him to seek a greater financial collaboration, he becomes a reporter at the Sipa-Press agency, he then works for the major European and American magazines.

He reports in the USSR, Poland, Chile, Viet-Nam, Cambodia, Haiti, Pakistan, Central Africa, Mozambique, Lebanon, Israel, Iraq, China.

In 1990 he became a freelance photographer and produced "features", he then collaborated very regularly with Figaro magazine, for which he made a number of trips to Africa, Asia and the Americas. It still covers several major events: fall of the Berlin Wall, Romanian revolution, Gulf War and Yugoslavia. But the major subjects which occupy it more and more are cultural and sociological, Christians of Ukraine or Ethiopia, Sicily, Ivory Coast, Lake Chad, the Zapatistas, Afghanistan, Hong Kong, Guatemala or the Brazil of the favelas. He regularly collaborates with other magazines: Équipe magazine for which he produces numerous portraits of athletes; Le Monde 2, Joyce and VSD.

In 2004 he founded with Vincent Leloup and a few close photographers, the professional association site Fédéphoto, which would become Divergence images, an association of 135 professional photographers in France and abroad, he chaired the association until the end of 2009.

For ten years, his personal work has been located in France where he follows the career of the great French couturier Christian Lacroix, a book project in progress. He defines himself as a photographer of humans and beliefs, fascinated by rituals. During the period 1989 to 2005 he worked in the tunnel of the arenas of France, 5 minutes before the bullfights of Toros, he endeavored to show the intimidated of the danger of the "matadores".

He is also a classical portrait painter, focusing on light and emphasizing his subject.

Last trips to Africa and Asia, the Uranium route, the Beijing Lhasa train, the Hanoi millennium.

Several more literary subjects should be noted: a portrait of Douglas Kennedy at his home in Maine in 2009, a cultural travel subject for Don Quijote's 500 years in 2008.

From 2010 to 2019 he made numerous trips to Africa for the group of Jeune Afrique which were destined for Gabon, Ivory Coast, Congo Brazzavile, Benin and Togo.

Find this artist and many more in our collection of works by sport photographers.