After a doctorate dedicated to the image in cinema, a hesitation between cinema and photography, then working as researcher in human sciences, author and editor, Jean-Michel Hétru chooses professional photography in 2006 then switched to fine art in 2011.
His work revolves around the fascinated, astonished, ironic, humorous or tender observation of culture, behavior, history, and nature too, and undoubtedly of the existence.
A specialist in the realm of the imagination, he never tires of exploring the human sphere and its creations in all their forms.
Deliberately oriented towards a multidisciplinary approach, which he considers enriching because dangerous, he likes the fantastic as Roger Caillois envisioned it : a crack that knocks one off the rails and leads to the discovery of something else.
However, we cannot be satisfied with the immensity of habit and homogeneity, just as we cannot live with only the prospects of misery and horror that assail us from all sides. We are beings of contrast and balance. And we need contrast and rebalancing, which is what fantasy allows, opening up pleasure, questioning, complicity, emotion, or awareness. Do yourself good by infiltrating discreet ruptures, by denouncing powerful constraints, by laughing too. And feel good to move foward. It is this approach that underlies his work.
