François-Marie Banier - Lot with 2 books: I Missed You & Perdre La Tête - 2005-2009

You're bidding on two books by François-Marie Banier.

François-Marie Banier is a French photographer born in 1947 in Paris, France. He is known for his photography that often features celebrities and other public figures. Banier has photographed notable individuals such as Yves Saint Laurent, Françoise Sagan, Samuel Beckett, Vladimir Horowitz, Louis Aragon, François Mitterrand, Kate Moss, Mick Jagger, and Princess Caroline of Monaco. Influenced by Salvador Dalí and Marie-Laure de Noailles, his work has been exhibited in prestigious venues including the Centre Pompidou, the Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Museum Haus Lange, and Villa Medici. He has been honored with awards such as the Grand prix des lectrices de Elle. Banier currently resides in Paris, France.

Perdre La Tête
Steidl, 2005
Hardcover, 256 pages, English
24.7x18cm
Very good condition

Every day, armed with his camera and usually driving his moped, François-Marie Banier leaves his home with no preconceived ideas in mind, simply the desire to discover what the world looks like on this particular day. Preferring the veracity of black and white, he focuses on street scenes in which the appearance and demeanour of faces and figures bear the marks of a particular life trajectory that has the power to touch our emotions — streetcleaners who look like mythological warriors, people out for a stroll, passers-by, couples, lonely figures — all have lived through experiences and trials that we can only guess at.

I Missed You
Steidl, 2009
Hardcover, 352 pages, English
24.7x18cm
Very good condition

“My thirst for faces, for bodies, for ways of sitting, standing and walking and for newly discovered gazes slakes all other thirsts. My thirst for music, for the sea, for mountain peaks, for the myriad pleasures and feelings that make life so varied, so similar, so captivatingly unpredictable. I’ll never cease to be moved every time I bring my camera to my eye as it swings to and fro in front of my heart, to capture first one, then another of the alluvial deposits that we are, the products of centuries of thought, custom, laughter, pain, alliances, loves, fighting, beliefs, doubts, of everything and its opposite making gazes so deep and mysterious that I’ve made my choice between to be or not to be, and not only for my own sake but for you whom I have missed, each producing an equally strong turmoil, echoing so many civilizations and dreams that we owe it to them to appear: we are links in the chain of eternity.”