The representations of the oldest masks are masks of animals, like those found in the paintings in the Lascaux cave in France. Some of these masks are still visible in contemporary rites around the world.
The correlation between the masks worn during these rituals and the anthropomorphic figurations of the Upper Paleolithic are striking. In many parts of Europe and especially in the Iberian Peninsula (Spain, Portugal and the Basque Country), archaic and mysterious figures regularly haunt carnival rites since the Middle Ages (but referring according to some specialists, like A.Darpeix, member of the historical and archaeological society of Perigord, to a distant shamanic and Neolithic antiquity).
They are masks adorned with skins of animals, vegetables and straw, surrounded by bells and bones,often crowned with horns and woods. Thus arises the wild man within modern paganism as to symbolize the rebirth of nature emerging from winter. The figures are essentially ambiguous, as at the crossroads of nature and culture. Masks always speak of the mysteries of existence: in traditional societies, they were or still are the figure of ancestors and spirits of the dead, that of protective or evil spirits.
was born in France in 1975. In the 2000’s he worked at studio Astre in Paris parallel to his photographic studies in CIFAP. He worked as an assistant for Patrick Swirc, William Klein and many others for magazines such as Vogue, Flair, Elle, Vanity Fair, etc… Then he began a career as a documentary photographer. From 2003 to 2005 he teamed up with the agency Wostokpress and was sent to India as a correspondent. In 2007, he founded the Trikaya Photos agency. Since 2015, He has been working on the ongoing project “Theatre Land”. His images have been published in various international magazines (OjodePez, Courrier international, Libération, The Sunday guardian, Le Nouvel Observateur, The Hindu, CNN, Foreign Policy, etc…) and exhibited in India and abroad.
