Mikaël Lafontan

Born in 1968, French-Swedish photographer Mikael Lafontan lives and works in Paris. Mikael Lafontan started to take photos when he was 16, after a romantic experience. He buys his first SLR and enrolls in the photo club of the MJC in the nearest city. This is how his passion for photography was born. After getting his baccalaureate, he goes abroad for a year of photography studies; then, he studies for about two years at the faculty of fine arts, in the photography department, in Saint-Denis. He quits his studies and gets a retail job selling cameras in a large Parisian shop. He gets his first commission from an artistic director at a brand identity agency. More commissions followed and Mikael Lafontan gradually became a professional photographer. With a French father and a Swedish mother, the artist receives an education between two cultures and two extremely different mentalities. He defines himself through his differences: in France he is Swedish, in Sweden he is French. He is always the nostalgic of the country where he is not. This nostalgia is the engine of his artistic inspiration. Mikael Lafontan loves taking pictures in the Nordic country and rebuilding the atmpsphere of Scandinavian sagas. Mikael Lafontan is a 'hybrid' result between a frontal style and technique, as practiced by the German school and a more poetic mix on speech, atmosphere and the image processing. His work as an architecture and design photographer has given him a greater rigor in framing, proportions and graphic qualities. He also collaborates with advertising and visual identity agencies and with big companies.