Biography
Jean-Baptiste Huynh was born in France in 1966, of a French mother and a Vietnamese father. As an autodidact, he taught himself photographic lighting and printing techniques, which he mastered to the point of developing a personal style. His pure and timeless photography is recognizable in widely varied themes and subjects: portraits, nudes, minerals and plants, as well as spiritual symbols and
emblematic masterpieces.
Jean-Baptiste Huynh’s thematics include the human gaze, our image of ourselves, the play of light, a sense of timelessness, and an attempt to capture infinity. Between 2006 and 2012, he made a study of light through five photographic projects: MIRRORS (2006), TWILIGHT (2007), FIRE (2008), MONOCHROME (2009), LOUVRE (2010) and BLIND (2011), brought together in the book LUMIÈRE along with the personal exhibition given by the Louvre.
Jean-Baptiste Huynh considers the staging of his installations — their scenography — along with the conception of his books, as integral parts of his artistic vision. He has authored twelve personal books.
Villa Médicis hors-les-murs laureate, Jean-Baptiste Huynh has exhibited in major galleries and museums worldwide. In 2002, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie presented the exhibition YEUX along with a book of portraits by Jean-Baptiste Huynh of major international photographers and painters. In 2006, the National School of Fine Arts of Paris devoted a retrospective to Jean-Baptiste Huynh, LE REGARD À OEUVRE, which brought together his studies of the human face in a variety of world cultures. In 2012, the Louvre invited Huynh to show RÉMANENCE a collection of his photographs inspired by objects in the Museum’s collection.
In 2017, Guimet Museum of Asian art in Paris gave Jean-Baptiste Huynh carte blanche to show an exhibition in 2019. A continuation of his exhibition at the Louvre, retrospective of 20 years of Jean-Baptiste Huynh’s photographic work on Asia, enriched with new work made specifically within the collections of Guimet Museum and his new series REFLECTION - ASIA, focusing on diversity of the woman face in Asia.
In 2019, the artist work on a wider portraits project: WOMAN, enlighting the beauty of the woman face in its universality and timelessness. A selection of photographs has been presented at Galerie Lelong & Co., avenue Matignon (Paris). This project comes with a series of interviews about “beauty” gathering answers from various personalities. In 2019, Jean-Baptiste Huynh’s work has also been exhibited at Patrik Gutknecht’s gallery in Geneva and at Multimedia Museum of Art in Moscow.
cludes portraits, nudes and still-life projects and is well in evidence in his most recent series: Mirrors, Fire and Twilights.
Huynh’s thematic preoccupations include the face — and the human gaze in particular — the play of light, the sense of timelessness, and the attempt to capture infinity. Huynh considers the staging of his installations — their scenography — along with the conception of his books, as integral parts of his artistic vision. He has authored nine volumes dedicated to portraiture. Jean-Baptiste Huynh has exhibited in major galleries and museums worldwide.
