Fabrice Milochau is a professional photographer recognized in the region, committed through his career, his profession, his passions in favor of environmental protection. He spent his childhood near Fontainebleau and immersed himself in the surrounding forests. He had several jobs until the age of 30 in the business world, but decided to take the plunge and devote himself more to nature by first becoming a general environmental technician and then a journalist for the magazines Science & Nature and Animaux Sauvages.

Fascinated by photography, Fabrice Milochau became convinced that the aesthetics and beauty of landscapes work better than long speeches for the defense and respect of nature and he devoted himself to it since 1998. The forest of Fontainebleau, the cradle of his childhood, will be his first major subject published in Geo and the subject of his first book.

Today, he is recognized as a specialist in landscape photography, with many visual testimonies of his travels in France, Africa, and South America. Published by many magazines, he is also the author of about fifteen books on natural heritage and photographic techniques.

“I work in my own way for the preservation of the environment, through the eyes and the wonder”. For example, the book Planète France will give rise to an exhibition on the Champs Élysées during Cop21, presenting the landscape-diversity and the enhancement of French “wild” landscapes.

Since 2010, Fabrice Milochau has also been exploring another path, that of contemporary art, giving new life to his photographic works while preparing the release of a new book devoted to the Forest of Fontainebleau.

Photographer and landscape surveyor

“A landscape teaches us much more about our imagination than about the configuration of a place; through it begins a great inner journey. I have often been told that my photographs were exotic, that they evoked other latitudes, other worlds. Instinctively, it’s true, I have always looked elsewhere, most of the time I see and feel it everywhere.”

“My photographs are not the fruit of my anticipation, they are offered to me by nature, offered by chance. The lived moment takes precedence over the guarantee of the result… This exercise leads to a systematic change of scenery, the region and its stereotypes are forgotten, the landscapes I discover no longer have any nationality. To see elsewhere, you have to be nowhere.”

“Thus, it is not simply a matter of proposing beautiful images, but of projecting the spectator into his or her own emotions, of showing those particular moments and details that engender mysteries, that appeal to our unconscious and inscribe our dreams in contemporary reality.

The forest of Fontainebleau has deeply marked my temperament and my approach to photography; I spent my first year of “professional photography” walking daily in this forest. It has thus gradually insinuated itself into me as a balm of artistic and spiritual youth: this effect is still active. From a technical point of view, the forest is one of the richest photographic subjects; this technical requirement makes the workshops that I have the pleasure of animating in Fontainebleau with photography lovers of all levels all the more interesting.”

My link to nature

“My connection to nature, and to the forest in particular, is deep. Landscape photography has become my specialty out of necessity; that of finding myself bathed in nature, of discovering its innumerable mysteries and wonders in the four corners of the country, and then the world. But the forest of Fontainebleau constantly reminds me of it, wherever I am an invisible link operates. Just as childhood conditions your personality and values forever.

Fontainebleau is a melting pot of nature and history, of culture and art. It is perhaps the perfect synthesis of what makes a world, our world: all the dimensions of humankind, through its relationship with nature, its architectural achievements, or its thirst for artistic renewal. It is this dimension of the whole that I feel here, and it is again this dimension that I find in the forest.

At my level, I try to be part of the tradition of the Barbizon painters through photography. All the arts come together, as long as they are animated by the same motivations and the same quest: that of a thirst for presence, which seeks an emotional truth beyond the illusion of reality… It is this spirit, this impulse that I try to share simply and with as many people as possible through my photographic workshops in the forest. Encouraging people to trust their feelings, their emotions and to use them in photography.”

To learn more about the photographic workshop of Fabrice Milochau.