SPOTLIGHT ON: Alain Laboile and The Family

Alain Laboile is a sculptor, photographer and author of the book The Family. Tens of thousands of online followers visit daily to see his images.

BY NICK RICE

Alain Laboile is a sculptor, photographer and father of six children, who are the protagonists in a striking family album that Laboile began at the age of 39, back in 2007. A self-taught photographer, who has only one photo of his own childhood, Laboile says he simply wanted to mark the passing of time with his family.

He called the series The Family and from his rural retreat in France the images he created soon found admirers in all corners of the world. Tens of thousands of online followers visit daily to see his images. After the first five years, the New York Times got in touch to bring his talents to a wider audience. Then from 2012 onwards came the exhibitions – first in Japan and then America, and back to where it all began, when in 2014 The Family entered the collection of the French Museum of Photography.

Julie Guiyot-Corteville, former Chief Curator of the museum, says, “His photography is that of interaction, fragility, overflow. He captures the moments of nothing, the unexpected as well as the predictable, the blossoming as well as the overflowing, the imagination as well as the banality. His poetic travellings bracket the passing of time, the waltz of clouds, the flight of leaves. He works on the humble material of everyday life like organic matter, enchanting it. It is Alice having tea with the rabbit, Philemon going down the well that leads him to another world… No, this is definitely not paradise, nor the dream life of angels. It is just life, simply life and nothing else.”