Rémi Noël
Born in 1963, Rémi Noël lives and works in Paris. He discovered photography in the 1990s, while working as a copywriter in advertising. Self-taught, he has been building a discreet and singular body of work, composed in silver gelatin black and white, shaped by visual and poetic silences.
With gentle irony and a deliberate economy of means, he creates sober images where the unexpected occasionally surfaces: a detail, a repurposed object, a quiet strangeness. His world drifts between fiction and the everyday, rooted in a minimalist tradition that favors suggestion over explanation.
Starting in the early 2000s, he made several trips to the United States, particularly to Texas, which he explores as a kind of mental territory. His photography captures margins, traces, and the subtle signs of the ordinary, in a form of fragmentary, open-ended storytelling where slowness and ambiguity leave space for interpretation.
In 2013, he founded Poetry Wanted, an independent publishing house that naturally extends his visual practice. Among its publications is This is not a map, a series of folded books in the style of road maps, questioning our relationship to space, reading, and image.
His work has been exhibited in France and abroad. In 2021, he held a solo exhibition at Galerie Bigaignon in Paris, titled Dear America. He also took part in several group exhibitions at the gallery in 2023, including Voyages en noir & blanc and Chair de temps.
SELECTED ARTWORKS
VIDEO
Rémi Noël • Dear America
Thierry Bigaignon takes us on a tour of the French artist's most recent solo show.
PUBLICATION
SOLO SHOWS
2021 ”Dear America”, Bigaignon, Paris, France
2015 ”On the road”, Fotofever Art Fair, Paris, France
2013 ”Texas”, Republic Gallery, Paris, France
2011 “Poetry wanted”, atelier Demi-Teinte, Paris, France
2005 “Rémi Noël – Photographies”, Galerie Passage du désir, Paris, France
2004 “Vaguement poétique”, atelier Demi-Teinte, Paris, France
GROUP SHOWS
2023 “A Black & White Journey”, Bigaignon, Paris, France
2023 ”Chair de temps”, Bigaignon, Paris, France
2020 ”Voyages extra-ordinaires”, Festival du regard, Cergy-Pontoise, France
2020 ”United”, Bigaignon, Paris, France
2019 “Bernard Plossu et ses amis”, Maison Folie Hospice d’Havré, Tourcoing, France
2018 ”This is not a map / USA”, Festival Itinéraires des photographes voyageurs, Bordeaux, France
2016 ”My Hero!”, Bedford Gallery, San Francisco, United States of America
2006 “Young blood”, Opera gallery, New York, United States of America
2005 Exposition collective, FOAM (Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam), Amsterdam, Netherlands
2004 “Confrontation/histoire(s) parallèle(s)”, Institut Néerlandais, Paris, France