André Sanchez is an independant Illustrator/Photographer who grew up in Bordeaux and now based in Paris, France, since 2000. André was not even particularly obsessed about making a career in photography.

He did, however, fall in love with the French capital and its architecture. He started his profession as free lance artist 7 years ago as an autodidact.

His work consists of a mix of photography and graphic elements, mainly typography, engraving or scanned material most usually. He have a number of photographs that he originally shot, compiled and stored as a source for future works. Portraits of models, landscape from travel, he began taking photos of everything he saw, capturing details of the buildings, objects and people he encountered on the city’s busy streets – faces, printed words, asphalt, wood, rust, leaves, mold… Through trial and error, André taught himself how to combine, superpose and transform these images on his computer. This kind of assemblage is more and more often called Photographism or Post-Photography.

The mix of elements, specific to this digital collage technique, can also be seen in the subjects he choose. André likes using the digital contents this way, for it gives him a lot of freedom when creating, it is symbolically rich, and lets express his aesthetic vision of the picture.This is why in his compositions reality is unusual and the space and time dimensions are reinterpreted. He works on a range of commercial commissions and projects in the publishing, editorial, fashion, music and advertising sectors.
He presents his new series « Persona » : The definition of Persona is a social role or a character played by an actor. First, André took portait pictures of 12 female models in a studio. Then he works, retouches and recomposes the photos with the computer. He uses Photoshop and digital techniques to great effect, creating works that have tremendous depth and emotion engagement. This series of portraits is a post-photographic combination of collages, textures, dust, scratches, many colors, some graphics elements, conceptual compositions and other interventions that turn minimal elements into complex details.

This abstract decoration gives to the subjects a timelessness, an alteration in order to increase the capacity to move and captivate the gaze. To this, with a special technic of retouching, he remove quite imperfections of the face but also lashes and eyebrows to the models, as in the paintings of portraits of women in the Renaissance period (it was not fashionable to have them). The goal of this effect is to stress the tension in the image. The eyes of each model, of each actor, seize the attention of the audience. Step by step the beauty of the models becomes more intriguing, imperfect, or sometimes dramatic, the portraits stare at the viewer in a deeply enigmatic atmosphere and give free rein to their imagination. The models in her pieces turn from a pretty face into a mysterious, edgy beings: pieces of modern art?
He offer a spectacular and personnal vision of the woman beauty with impact of a silent cry but at the same time, it seems that everything manifests a thin, almost timid, soundtrack, so solid that it cherishes us in the gaze of these forms in search of perfect imperfection. Nothing is lost from the elegance and distinctions of the models, the emotion is reinforced, the portraits have much more resonance..
Here the perception of feminine beauty is extracted from its classical structure, to literally embrace a more abstract form of its aestheticism more innovative. [Official Website]