Interview with Bruno Mercier

#1 Please introduce yourself:
Well, if my nickname, Pixydream, is well known on numerous forums on the Internet, my real name is Bruno Mercier. I’m a french photographer and I currently live on the seaside in a small town called Carteret, in the Cotentin Peninsula, Normandy, just in front of the Jersey Island. It’s a marvellous place to live and work and it provides me with opportunities to explore wonderful seascapes and landscapes, furthermore I love the quality of light in my area.

#2 How did you get interested in photography?
In fact, my first encounter with photography took place in my childhood. My father was really addicted with photography, and he guided me in my first approaches and tentatives. Nevertheless at that time of my life I prefered drawing. I started as an illustrator and a comics author both for magazines and publishing houses in the mid 1980’s. During years I let photography aside. I came back to photography very recently when I bought a DSLR in 2006, I found in photography, and especially in B&W, all I always wanted to tell. It was a revelation.

#3 Do you have an artistic/photographic background?
I studied architecture and spent half of my life to be an illustrator. I think you learn a lot in that kind of job, composition, light, framing, density. I used to think a part of my style comes from my work as an illustrator and comics author. I really enjoy to tell stories in my pics I always considere photography as a narrative medium.

#4 Your playing with the light and shadows as well as rhythms is incredible, what other sources have been inspiring your art?
I have a great admiration for the XIXth century engravers like Gustave Dore. Engraving is really a great inspiration for me and is of course the very basis of my work above all for the inner “clair obscur” quality of those works.

#5 Most of your photographs were taken in low-key lightning style, why have you chosen to present them in this form?
That’s right I always prefered to work in low-key style. If you will study the works of the old masters (painters and engravers) you will note how they looked into the shadows for the critical detail that makes their pics so exciting… I often used as a personal quote the famous sentence “Light shines in darkness”. I think Low Key style give a wonderful feeling of depth when backgrounds provide the opportunity to wrap light with a much more dramatic effect around our subjects, something almost impossible to do in high key and that’s I try to do in my work.

#6 There are no people or even people’s silhouettes on your photographs, have you ever considered shooting portraits or some other pictures?
Thanks for this question. Yes a lot of people often ask why I always work without human subjects.. In fact it’s not exact.. Because I considere the viewer as a part of my compositions. My pics are like an invitation to enter the world I show. YOU are my main subject. This is YOUR story I tell.. I just try to open a window to your dreams.

#7 Could you tell our readers how to reach such excellent results in photography?
It’s difficult to answer such a question. I don’t know.. I could say some usual sentences like “Work hard”, “Take a lot of pics” etc. But it’s a fact I don’t know. A style comes from a personal story, from artistic background, art-culture, books etc. I didn’t start as a photographer, I come from another art and my own style is directly inspired by my life. The only thing we can say is to open the eyes and to observe the world.