Born in Lille, I am a father and an independent photographer.
I studied Khâgne—a two-year intensive preparatory course in humanities—in Lille, followed by a Master’s in British and American Literatures in Nice, and a Master’s in Journalism at Paris-Sorbonne University. I then moved to London for internships at The Sun, The Sunday Times, and The Guardian.

My first full-time job was as a local reporter for Var Matin, covering the Fréjus, Saint-Raphaël, and Saint-Tropez bureaus. In 2007, I relocated to China to document preparations for the Beijing 2008 Olympics. My photographs were published in L’Équipe Magazine, France’s leading sports publication.

Back in Paris, I contributed to the launch of the investigative media outlet Mediapart.fr. In 2009, I returned to China, where I lived for five years as Beijing correspondent for Le Temps, Le Soir, La Vie, and Le Monde Diplomatique. I was shortlisted three times for the prestigious Albert Londres journalism award and broke a major story for AFP: the first photograph of escaped Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng at a Beijing hospital.

In 2014, after returning to France, I published an illustrated book on the “indociles” of rural China—resistant, independent figures living far from the official narrative. The project blended long-form reporting with documentary photography and marked a turning point in the way I connected words and images in my work.

Over the next decade, I continued reporting—most recently as Le Monde‘s correspondent in the Centre-Val de Loire region—with assignments in Morocco, Scotland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, China, and Southeast Asia. I also took part in a unique editorial project: I served as editor-in-chief of a newspaper produced inside the Blois prison (Maison d’arrêt de Blois), where inmates contributed texts, interviews, and personal reflections as part of a structured publishing initiative.

I have since returned to Beijing, and I’m deeply honored to serve as Le Monde’s China correspondent. My work as a journalist and photographer is inseparable: I believe I can’t photograph a country unless I truly understand it—its history, its people, its contradictions. Writing and photography feed each other. Journalism brings depth to my images; photography brings immediacy and emotion to my reporting.

Over 20 years of freelance journalism, I have developed three core skills:

• I can quickly build trust with people from all walks of life.

• I know how to unearth untold stories and tell them with precision, sensitivity, and visual strength. I seek out the small story that helps make sense of the big picture.

• I work fast, independently, and under intense time pressure.

I value the raw strength of unretouched, often uncropped images.
My inspirations include photographers Marc Riboud and Song Chao, filmmakers Ken Loach and Jia Zhangke, and writers Nicolas Bouvier, Tiziano Terzani, and Peter Hessler.

Ken Loach: “The only thing that mattered to me was telling stories, period. But authentic stories, as close as possible to people and their social reality. Human stories that expose our contradictions, our suffering, our stupidity, our humour, the obscenity of certain behaviours. And stories that reflect my vision of the world.”