Biography

Born in 1966 to a French mother and a Vietnamese father, Jean-Baptiste Huynh is a French photographer known for his refined and contemplative visual language. Self-taught, he began learning photography, lighting, and printing techniques during his teenage years, developing a refined and timeless visual language. His work delves into universal themes — light, the gaze, self-perception, reflection, the passage of time, and the infinite. The black background in Jean-Baptiste Huynh’s work serves to extract the subject from its environment, evoking a cosmic space that reflects his deep interest in the infinite.

For nearly thirty years, Jean-Baptiste Huynh has explored the human face across ages, cultures, and continents, composing a gallery of gazes and presences that reveal both the universality and singularity of humanity. His work spans a wide range of subjects: portraiture, the nude, and the living world — human, animal, vegetal, and mineral.

Jean-Baptiste Huynh has published over fifteen books and has conceived the scenography for all his exhibitions.

He has collaborated with leading museums and institutions, developing photographic work that enters into dialogue with key works of art history.

In 2002, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie presented the exhibition YEUX, featuring portraits of some of the greatest contemporary photographers and painters.

In 2006, the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris dedicated a retrospective to him, LE REGARD À L’ŒUVRE, focused on his portraits created within major cultural institutions around the world.

In 2012, the Louvre Museum dedicated a solo exhibition to him, REMANENCE, conceived from a selection of works inspired by the museum’s collections. This exhibition marked the culmination of a cycle of research conducted between 2006 and 2012 on the many forms of light — as energy, matter, reflection, and mystery. These investigations are brought together in the book LUMIÈRE, which extends this aesthetic and spiritual quest at the heart of his work.

In 2019, the Musée National des Arts Asiatiques – Guimet dedicated the exhibition INFINIS D’ASIE to him, a retrospective of his work on the human face across the Asian continent, enriched with new pieces created from the museum’s collections.

In 2020, while the world was held in suspension by lockdown, Jean-Baptiste Huynh chose freedom and creation. He went to live in total immersion with a flower-adorned ethnic group in Ethiopia’s Omo Valley. From this experience emerged FLOWER CHILDREN, a series of portraits and body studies that stand apart within the artist’s body of work.

This work gave rise to the compelling and distinctive exhibition EDENS, presented in an unexpected venue: the Hôtel de Guise, an 18th-century townhouse reimagined by the artist as a poetic space suspended outside of time.

In 2023, he returned to Ethiopia to create MAGARATI, a film reflecting this human and artistic immersion — a shared experience of life and creation with this flower people.

At the end of 2023, the Saint-Pierre Cathedral in Geneva invited him to conceive the exhibition LUEUR, centered on the theme of light within the sacred space of the church.

In 2025, the Barbier-Mueller Museum in Geneva granted him carte blanche to conceive the exhibition and catalogue ECHOS — a dialogue between works from the museum’s prestigious collection and his own.

Jean-Baptiste Huynh is a recipient of the Villa Médicis Hors les Murs grant. His works are held in numerous public and private collections, including the Pinault Collection, the French National Contemporary Art Fund, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, the Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow, and the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid.