MAXIME RICHÉ
Photographer
Maxime Riché was born in 1982 and works between Paris and Brittany, following an unusual path into photography: engineering degrees from École Centrale, Columbia University, and Cambridge; formal photographic training at Les Gobelins; and, currently, doctoral research in creation and research at CY Cergy Paris Université / ENSAPC. He describes his method as "speculative documentary," deliberately setting aside photography's usual claim to objectivity to examine humanity's relationship to physical and environmental limits.
His best-known project, "Paradise" (André Frère Éditions, 2024), documents communities rebuilding after California's Camp Fire and Dixie Fire megafires, shot on infrared film; an earlier book, "Climate Heroes" (Hemeria, 2021); and other series ("Metaformance," "Espace Sensible," "Forêt Usagère") extend the same concern with landscape, bodies, and habitability. He was an artist-in-residence at La Capsule and the International College of Photography of Greater Paris in 2023-2024, producing work on the body and sport for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, and joined the Tendance Floue photographers' collective in July 2025.
His work has received the Prix Maison Blanche, the Prix Dahinden, and a Fotografia Europea open-call award; three Prix Pictet nominations; and support from the CNAP and the Académie des beaux-arts, alongside publication in GEO, M le magazine du Monde, and Wired. He works from a studio in Paris's 20th arrondissement, where the masterclass visits him directly.
WHAT MAXIME CAN BRING TO MASTERCLASS PARTICIPANTS
Where Harry Gruyaert offers participants a lifetime's accumulated eye, Riché offers the view from inside a career still being built: what it takes, today, to move between disciplines (engineering, research, image-making) and assemble a coherent body of work through grants, residencies, prizes, and collective membership rather than a single institutional path. Meeting him in his own studio makes visible the working process that a finished print or gallery wall usually hides.
For participants drawn to Damien Bachelot's account of supporting young photography directly (financing books, buying editions, building relationships with living artists) Riché is the living counterpart: a photographer whose current work, process, and even studio we can encounter directly, rather than through a market or institutional intermediary.