Biography

Jean-Baptiste Huynh is a French artist photographer artist born in 1966 to a French mother and Vietnamese father. A self-taught photographer, he began exploring the techniques of photography, lighting, and printing during his teenage years, developing a visual language that is both pared down and timeless. His gaze is expressed through the square format with great precision, affirming an aesthetic of balance and refinement. The use of a black background allows Jean-Baptiste Huynh to isolate his subject from any context, placing it in an abstract space free from gravity — creating a metaphor for the cosmos, a dimension that fascinates him deeply.

His work explores universal themes such as the gaze, light, self-image, reflection, and the notion of infinity. It also examines the question of representation in dialogue with the history of art, leading to collaborations with major museums that invite him to create works inspired by their collections. His photographic subjects are diverse: portraiture, the nude, still life, and the living world — plant, animal, mineral. He is the author of over fifteen monographs and designs the scenography for each of his exhibitions.

Four major museum exhibitions have marked Jean-Baptiste Huynh’s career.
In 2000, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP) in Paris commissioned him to photograph some of the world’s most renowned contemporary painters and photographers. This gallery of portraits and gazes was presented in 2002 in the exhibition Yeux at the MEP.

In 2006, the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris held a retrospective of his work, Le Regard à l’œuvre, focusing on his portraiture from across cultures and continents.

In 2012, the Louvre Museum gave him carte blanche to present the solo exhibition Rémanence, a contemporary perspective on its collections. The exhibition marked the culmination of six years of research into the multiple forms of light — as energy, matter, reflection, and mystery — gathered in the book Lumière.

“Jean-Baptiste Huynh, whose work is a quest for purity and plenitude, offers a body of images that evokes contemplation and restraint.”
— Henri Loyrette, President-Director of the Louvre Museum, Preface to the book Lumière, Éditions du Regard / Louvre.

In 2019, the Musée National des Arts Asiatiques – Guimet presented Infinis d’Asie, a retrospective of his thirty-year photographic exploration of the face across Asia, enriched by new works created in dialogue with the museum’s collections.

In 2020, during a world halted by lockdown, Jean-Baptiste Huynh lived in full immersion with a flower-adorned ethnic group in the Omo Valley in Ethiopia. This experience gave rise to Flower Children, a series of portraits and body studies unlike any other in his oeuvre, accompanied by the film Magarati, which he directed.

This body of work led to the bold and immersive exhibition Edens, held in a previously abandoned location: the Hôtel de Guise, an 18th-century private mansion transformed by the artist into a poetic, timeless space.

At the end of 2023, the Saint Peter Cathedral in Geneva invited him to create Lueur, an exhibition on the theme of light in resonance with the religious space.

In 2025, the Barbier-Mueller Museum in Geneva entrusted him with the creation of Échos, an exhibition and publication establishing a dialogue between the museum’s prestigious collection and his own photographic work.

Jean-Baptiste Huynh is a recipient of the Villa Médicis Hors les Murs award. His works are part of numerous public and private collections, including: the François Pinault Collection, the Jerry Speyer Art Collection (New York), the Fonds national d’art contemporain (France), the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, the Multimedia Art Museum(Moscow), the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and the Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid).

Awards

• Recipient of the Villa Médicis Hors les Murs award (1997)
• Kodak Critics’ Prize for Photography (Special Mention)
• Hewlett Packard Foundation for Photography Award (France, 1996)
• Moins Trente Prize from the Centre National de la Photographie (1996, Special Mention)

Representation

Jean-Baptiste Huynh is represented by Galerie Lelong & Co. (Paris), Camera Work (Berlin), Patrick Gutknecht Gallery (Geneva), and Holden Luntz Gallery (Palm Beach, Miami).