French photographer, born in 1988
Lives in Marseille
etiennedevillars.com
Project supported: MP#04

A self-taught photographer, he began by distributing his photographs in the music press alongside his work as a journalist and radio producer. Since 2019, he has been working on a number of long-term projects on themes revolving around youth, territory and memory. Today, his photographic approach is halfway between documentary writing and a lyrical approach, often nourished by words and music. He defines his practice as a means of provoking encounters and exploring real or fictional worlds.

It is in the Sahara desert that Etienne de Villars intends to carry out his project during this mentoring year. With Traverser – une enquête photographique, he aims to question the representations we associate with the desert, seeing it as a geographical setting but above all as a symbolic axis for an exploration on the borders of documentary and fiction. In this way, as he travels through Algeria and Mauritania, he harvests a memory in situ, allegorical and sensitive.