Originally an artist and musician, Claude Corbier became a professional photographer. A profession he has been practicing for 35 years in several fields: laboratory, press, or reportage. Based in Montpellier, in the south of France, he does not forbid himself any subject of inspiration: music, flowers, nudes, religious icons, architectural heritage, Australian landscapes… But in his series Swinging Montpellier, it is the emergence of a powerful rock scene that is the subject. A theme on which he has worked, in part, as part of his career as a photojournalist. “I followed in particular two groups that I accompanied as a tour manager on two tours in Spain,” he explains.

The people photographed are musicians, on stage or not, people of the night, roadies, journalists, managers… In his pieces, Claude Corbier realizes an additional and original work of colors. He has indeed made watercolor paintings, manual, on the original paper prints. “I learned this technique from the artist Ouka Leele in 1978 when she was making her Peluqueria series that propelled her onto the European art scene. At the time I called my work retro-modern, since there was the use of old methods (painting on black and white photo, collage, assembly) on contemporary subjects, and we were only a handful, in Montpellier and Barcelona, to work in this way”, he explains.

More to see on his Instagram account or his website.