Biography

Jean-Baptiste Huynh was born in France in 1966, of a French mother and a Vietnamese father. As an autodidact, he taught himself photographic lighting

and printing techniques, which he mastered to the point of developing a personal style. His pure and timeless photography is recognizable in widely varied themes and subjects : portraits, nudes, minerals and plants, as well as spiritual symbols and emblematic masterpieces.
Jean-Baptiste Huynh’s thematics include the human gaze, our image of ourselves, the play of light, a sense of timelessness, and an attempt to capture infinity.

Between 2006 and 2012, he made a study of light through five photographic projects : MIRRORS (2006), TWILIGHT (2007), FIRE (2008), MONOCHROME (2009), LOUVRE (2010) and BLIND (2011), brought together in the book LUMIÈRE along with the personal exhibition given by the Louvre.

Jean-Baptiste Huynh considers the staging of his installations — their scenography — along with the conception of his books, as integral parts of his artistic vision. He has authored fourteen personal books.

Villa Médicis hors-les-murs laureate, Jean-Baptiste Huynh has exhibited in major galleries and museums worldwide. In 2002, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie presented the exhibition YEUX along with a book of portraits by Jean-Baptiste Huynh of major international photographers and painters.

In 2006, the National School of Fine Arts of Paris devoted a retrospective to Jean-Baptiste Huynh, LE REGARD À L’OEUVRE, which brought together his studies of the human face in a variety of world cultures.

In 2012, the Louvre invited Huynh to show RÉMANENCE a collection of his photographs inspired by objects in the Museum’s collection.

In 2017, Guimet Museum of Asian art in Paris gave Jean-Baptiste Huynh carte blanche to show an exhibition in 2019. A continuation of his exhibition at the Louvre, retrospective of 20 years of his photographic work on Asia, enriched with new work made specifically within the collections of Guimet Museum and his new series REFLECTION – ASIA, focusing on diversity of the woman face in Asia.

In 2019, the artist works on a wider portraits projet : WOMAN, enlighting the beauty of the woman face in its universality and timelessness. A selection of photographs has been presented at Galerie Lelong Matignon. This project comes with a series of interviews about “beauty” gathering answers, from various personalities.
In 2019, Jean-Baptiste Huynh’s work has also been exhibited at Patrick Gutknecht’s gallery in Geneva and at Multimedia Museum of Art in Moscow.

In 2020 and 2021 , Jean Baptiste Huynh travels to Kenya and Ethiopia, doing hundreds of new works, the series FLOWER CHILDREN.

He will pursue the series during winter 2021-2022, presented during a solo show with Galerie Lelong at Paris Photo, in November 2022.

Simultaneously, the artist made the bold bet of taking over the abandoned, ghostly spaces of an 18th century mansion in the heart of the 7th arrondissement of Paris, Hôtel de Guise, for EDENS; a showcase for his latest works, FLOWER CHILDREN.

Jean-Baptiste Huynh conceived and designed the scenography of the exhibition himself, across three floors of the house, accompanied by a short film made by Michel Seydoux’s team, showing the artist at work in Ethiopia and Kenya.

This immersive exhibition reached a wide audience, welcoming 3,000 visitors over the course of the month, with international resonance thanks to the museum and gallery directors, collectors, supporters and art lovers who visited EDENS, often repeatedly. A conversation between the artist and the philosopher Raphaël Enthoven was held, around the theme of essentiality of beauty.
EDENS represents a cornerstone of his career and is intended to travel the world, housed in museums, galleries and unusual or symbolic places.

In late 2022, the artist traveled to New Zealand and Abu Dhabi, where he made thousands of new images, some of which will be shown for the first time at Galerie Patrick Gutknecht in Geneva, in May 2023.

The artist continued his photographic project in Ethiopia, with a second chapter of EDENS; another trip and immersion in the lives of the Flower Children, resulting in the film SHARING BEAUTY (currently in postproduction). The film contains scenes of sharing emotion, creativity, exchange and celebration between the Flower Children and the artist, who introduced them to new flavors and smells like dried fruit and spices, and invited them to create drawings and projections on paper, a new material for them.

Jean-Baptiste Huynh then left Ethiopia for Japan, to photograph the cherry trees in bloom, as well as rituals involving calligraphy and embroidery, in which time stands still, making way for the ceremony. He is currently working on potential museum exhibitions in Tokyo.

In Paris, Jean-Baptiste Huynh has begun a new collaboration with the danseur étoile Hugo Marchand, which notably involves creating works inspired by the sculptures at Musée Rodin in a new, transversal form of artistic expression encompassing sculpture, dance and photography.

A parallel project around the reading and interpretation of drawings from the department of graphical arts at the Louvre is also in the planning stages.