HERVÉ LASSÏNCE

Doing an interview requires more work of me than doing average post on Pineapple, but that’s what I like the best. Everything is prepared to do more of this, but as the opening of the queue, I am glad to share an interview – and a selection of his amazing works – with french photographer, Hervé Lassïnce.

Could we start with some background information about you Where did you grow up, where are you based, how did you get interested in photography?

I grew up in a city in the Paris suburbs called Créteil, a city that had the advantage of concentrating a lot of diverse social origins.As a teenager, I was interested in various forms of art: literature, cinema, painting, music, etc. My interest in photography came later, as I discovered in a municipal library the books of Nan Goldin, Sebastião Salgado, Helmut Newton, Robert Mapplethorpe….
Since the age of twenty, I have lived in Paris. It was in this city that I became an actor. I’ve played a lot in the theater, in all kinds of theater companies, and in a few movies and TV series.I’m also now a screenwriter, writing for Netflix for about a year.

Did you always know photography was your ultimate go-to outlet of expression?

Not at all. In fact, photography came quite late in my artistic journey.During my thirties, and I’m not sure I know exactly why, I began to photograph my loved ones a lot in our daily life or our intimacy : my sexual partners, my lovers, my friends, men or women, their families, their children …I never studied photography or art, and my only technical photography training was to read the instructions for my camera, a film camera.And then bit by bit I started posting photos on Facebook and then on Instagram. They aroused more and more interest, it gave me a lot of encouragement.A few days after my 40th birthday, I went for the first time to a laboratory to have twenty of my favorite images printed on beautiful paper. I liked the process, and I liked the result. And then I started exhibiting in galleries, I started selling prints to collectors and I released my first book, Mes frères (Granon publishing). At the same time, I started doing personalities portraits for magazines, or magazines would pay me to illustrate articles from pictures I had already taken. I am very happy to have found such a strong medium of artistic expression and creativity. When you are an actor, and even if I have always had the chance to work with great directors, you are not a “creator”: you depend on and are part of a larger whole, of an artistic creation which is not yours.

I felt the strong need to express my own vision of the world as I see it, and present it to others.

It could have been the theater, but I liked the deep relationship with the reality of photography (at least as I practice it).

It takes time to find and develop one’s own style. Remembering back, when was the turning point to be “Hervé Lassïnce photography “?

Quite quickly I must say, my style fell into place, and has hardly changed since: using only natural light or available electrics; framing at 35mm (I like being able to see the bodies and the setting in which the people I photograph are moving) ; to reflect the beauty of people, and the love I have for them.

What is the best thing to being a photographer?

When you’re an actor, professionally, you always have to associate with the same kind of people : actors, directors and technicians. Let’s not talk about the job of a screenwriter.

Whereas when you are a photographer you quickly find yourself, as long as you are curious about others like I am, in all kinds of extremely different atmospheres, meeting people that you might never have met otherwise.

So, I took pictures in a breast surgery operating room, in a bar mitzvah near the Champs-Elysées, in the locker rooms of a Muay-Thai competition, the playground of a primary school in suburb, a swinger club for trans women, I photographed pig corpses at the wholesale market in Rungis, a prostitute in Dubai, rockers in Moscow, mafia in Uttar Pradesh in India, couples having sex, families of all kinds, and for newspapers, quantity of public figures: writers, actresses, politicians, singers, sportsmen…

How did you come up with the idea to start an Onlyfans page? What can visitors see there?

The idea came to me quite oddly, and because of Instagram! For a long time, I tried to post on Instagram some pictures I took where my friends were naked. These weren’t pornographic images, these people were naked because they had reason to be so when I took the photo, and these images were totally in line with my usual artistic process. However, Instagram censored them systematically, after a few minutes, hours or days. I was in shock every time. I was not used to this violent, sexist, homophobic Anglo-Saxon Puritanism. If you post a shirtless man, it will work, but a shirtless woman will be immediately censored. They calmed down on the buttocks, so to speak, but for a long time you couldn’t post them either. If you show two men kissing topless, you may see your image censored for “sex acts”.A lot of artists are victims of this censorship on Facebook and Instagram. You have to be cunning every time, blurring the sexes or the nipples of women, which I hate to do, because I feel like that makes me a collaborator. I know there are political problems far more important than the ridiculous prudery of social networks, but all the same, I believe that this soft and instituted violence participates in this mercantile and capitalist moralism which does not have to interfere with the work and vision of an artist. Do you know why this censorship exists? Quite simply because the advertisers who run rampant on social networks refuse to see the advertising of their products alongside cocks and tits!One morning in 2019, I logged into my Instagram account as usual and discovered with amazement and distress that my account had been deleted entirely. For one last nude photo, and following repeated warnings that I did not take into account, Instagram had removed my profile, my identity, all my photos and of course all my followers (at the time I had some several thousand, patiently acquired over time) ! It was very violent because we artists now rely heavily on social media to publicize and disseminate our work, for our archives and our professional address book. To see oneself “erased” from the surface of the web is quite unpleasant. This has happened to several artists that I know. We are a sort of club of outcasts and cursed artists (lol)!

But I did not let myself be defeated.

I immediately created a second account on Insta. But there was still the problem of posting nude images. I then had the idea, to be sure of peace, to create an OnlyFans account. I had vaguely heard of this site, and thought it was only for porn actresses and webcam boys, but I was assured that it is used by a whole bunch of professions, for example as chefs or coaches of all kinds who teach there. It was not for me to give lessons there (lol), but to be able to calmly show there boys and some girls such as God created us. And it was unthinkable for me to put these photos on Flickr, which I have always found out of date, or on Twitter, which I find generally anxiety-provoking, and not suitable for showing artistic work.In the meantime, and thanks to the providential intervention of a friend working at the Facebook group, I was able to recover my account as if nothing had happened (which also proves in passing that yes, Instagram keeps all the archives of everything). I got my account back, all my images from the start, and all my followers. I have 10,200 today.But I kept this OnlyFans account, which has a significant aspect : it brings in a little money, and is thus used to finance films, developments (which have become very expensive), equipment, prints on paper …

Because yes, art has a cost! Artists must live! And not all love and fresh water!

And I’d rather show my personal artistic work on OnlyFans than having to photograph weddings, fashion or consumer goods, of course with all due respect for photographers who do it, out of taste or necessity.So, since OnlyFans is a private account, I can let go of it more than anywhere else, and can post pictures of nudity, but also of sex and erections, but always in my photographic style.

Seems like you enjoy being front of the camera. Only clothes on, or sometimes clothes off?

No, not that much actually! I sometimes put portraits of me, or selfies (always in the stories), because I know that the followers who do not know me personally (therefore the vast majority) sometimes like to know what the artist looks like behind the portraits. … « But how does he get to know all these beautiful boys? » (laughs) On my OnlyFans, you can even find one or two photos of me, not out of exhibitionism, but more out of respect and artistic reciprocity with all those friends who agree to pose for me, with panache and freedom. They are very inspiring !

How important is social media to you and your career?

I will never be able to spit on Instagram or Facebook. It would be as absurd as it is hypocritical. The use of these social networks, despite all their faults and their ugliness, helped me a lot to launch my career as a photographer, to make my work discovered beyond France, to make myself known to the general public but also to magazine iconographers, editors, gallery owners, art collectors, etc. For us, artists who started our careers in the 2010s, it is an indispensable tool. But I still think that nothing is more beautiful than discovering a photographic image in a well-printed book, or as a print in an exhibition!And then, on a more personal level, but the personal and the artistic are very linked in my photography, it is thanks to these social networks that I was able to meet exceptional people, that I would perhaps never have could meet otherwise, and some of whom have become very close friends, sexual partners and even lovers 🙂 !

Any major inspirations?

There are a lot of photographers of all kinds that I appreciate, of course, but I see two direct inspirations in my work : the great American photographer Nan Goldin, of course, to whom I am sometimes honored to be compared myself, and the fanzine Butt, which appeared in the 2000s, a model of simplicity and revolution in the way of photographing and interviewing gay boys of all kinds, far from the absurd clichés of the gay press of the time.My other inspirations are above all the people I photograph themselves, my daily life and the places in which I move, the ambient light, and then the cinema, classical painting, literature, the great myths, the sacred texts, God and gay porn.

What is the most important thing you have learned about yourself as an artist since you started?

Quite simply that I was able to conceive as a photographer simple and beautiful images, which managed to reflect my admiration and my love for others. Which is a lot, considering that I had never imagined myself a photographer and that I never went to any school for it !

What do you do when you have time for yourself?

Oh, perfectly classic things, like seeing my friends, reading, going to the movies, watching series, making love, visiting other countries, taking care of my garden… and taking pictures !

Please finish the sentences:

Currently obsessed for… The TV show we are currently writing for Netflix, and which is not about photography, but about standup!

The best way to sleep is… naked of course!

My favorite movie is… Magnolia, PT Anderson (1999)