Olivier Roller

Olivier's first portrait is one of his grandfather in 1994, in a very tight frame and devoid of artifices, with already the urge to go beyond the clichés of the portrait: smile, stand straight, be beautiful.

Still a student, he finally turned to photography, with which he found his language and a new means of communication. He needed faces, which is why he went to meet many writers and filmmakers who promoted their work in bookstores and venues. The press subsequently promptly gives him assignments.

This portrait, made in December 2005, is the first that he realizes for him, out of any assignment. He followed Jeanne Moreau at a film festival in Belgium. Back in Paris, he asks if he can photograph her "for nothing". He wants to move away from assignments, where the model is in a communication logic. At the end of the session, he realizes his first self-portrait, sticking his face to that of the actress. This photograph is now the cover of the book Visage by Bruno Chibane, gathering 20 years of portraits of assignments of Olivier Roller.

In 2008, the Musée du Louvre gave him a carte blanche in the following terms "would you like to work on the equivalent of Sarkozy (French president) and Fillon (Sarkozy' prime minister), 2000 years ago ?". He will spend 6 months, every Tuesday (public closure’ day), all alone in the gallery of Antiques.

From the following year, he set out to confront the faces of today's "emperors" (financiers, publicists, intellectuals, diplomats, politicians ...) with their counterparts of the past (from the Roman emperors to Napoleon). This project is still in progress.

He contacts the men of power, proposes to them to come to make a portrait in his studio, and to become a face hanging on the wall of an exhibition.

He makes contemporaries and, sometimes, alive these pieces of sculpted stone where each break or scratch is the mirror of our fragilities.

In the collective book West is the Best, Olivier Roller speaks about his surfing practice, that he compares to photography.

Being in the ocean, in the middle of the waves, allows him not to think, just to be present. He describes this practice as "a symbolic vehicle for advancement," and explains that surfing has allowed him "to reach a certain animality" and "reconnects with reality". As in his photographic practice, Olivier Roller explains that he loves the shifting, unpredictable and even disappointing side of the practice. He compares photography to the ocean, who "has nothing against you, but you will never be able to dominate him, you just have to be humble."