Yann Stofer

“I was wandering around the Dax train station, restless, my latest book had just come out, I was hoping for success, recognition, love—anything and everything, just for something to happen—when I received a call from a stranger. She was offering me the Nile and Agatha Christie.” — C.S.

Fifty years after the death of the queen of British crime fiction, the writer Colombe Schneck traveled to Egypt, accompanied by photographer Yann Stofer, following in the footsteps of this adventure-loving archaeology enthusiast, at a time when the Grand Egyptian Museum is opening its doors and celebrating the splendor of Egypt’s heritage.

Un dimanche d’août ensoleillé, aux portes de Londres. Au Ham Polo Club, le plus ancien club de la capitale britannique et le seul à se situer intra-muros, le rituel dominical se déploie dans toute sa singularité. Le public est venu nombreux aujourd’hui : les invités du Club House savourent leur privilège, installés autour de tables dressées, champagne et petits fours à portée de main. Mais l’essentiel de la foule s’étire de l’autre côté du terrain, où les coffres de voitures, ouverts comme des loges éphémères, deviennent les points de ralliement de familles et d’amis. Au-delà du match, c’est le public qui compose la véritable scène.

C’est tout un éventail de la société anglaise qui se donne rendez-vous. Les familles avec enfants côtoient des jeunes couples ou des groupes d’amis. Les habitués élégants se mêlent à des spectateurs plus modestes, venus simplement partager un pique-nique au soleil. Chacun a recréé son propre salon à ciel ouvert. Certains étalent des couvertures sur l’herbe, d’autres installent des chaises pliantes. On vient avec son nourrisson, avec son chien. Les paniers en osier voisinent avec les sacs de course Marks & Spencer remplis de chips et de salades toutes prêtes. Les plus prévoyants sortent des plats maison, comme une salade de pommes de terre préparée avec soin. Plus loin, un couple a même dressé un service en porcelaine signé Fortnum & Mason. C’est une version très british du célèbre tableau d’Edouard Manet ‘Le déjeuner sur l’herbe’.

Au centre de cette bande de gazon, une buvette tenue par une jeune fille distribue rafraîchissements et snacks. Tout autour, les conversations s’entremêlent, les rires fusent et le temps semble suspendu. Puis les regards se tournent à nouveau vers le terrain : les chevaux lancés à toute vitesse, les joueurs en action, le maillet frappant la balle, les équipes célébrées par les applaudissements du public, la remise des trophées.

Et quand l’agitation retombe, restent aussi ces détails muets que l’objectif du photographe saisit : un reste de taboulé oublié au fond d’une assiette, un couteau planté dans un morceau de fromage, des gobelets vides alignés comme les témoins d’une fête passée. Autant de petites natures mortes, traces fragiles et intimes de ce partage collectif. Chaque cliché témoigne d’un fragment de vie et l’ensemble compose un tableau bigarré où se mêlent tradition, convivialité et codes sociaux plus ou moins assumés. Un microcosme qui raconte une manière d’être ensemble, entre tradition aristocratique et convivialité populaire, entre spectacle sportif et art de vivre à l’anglaise. Une Angleterre à la fois raffinée et décontractée, snob et populaire, où chacun trouve sa place, côte à côte, le temps d’un pique-nique d’été.

"Le rêve inachevé de Jack Kerouac" (Jack Kerouac’s Unfinished Dream) - Actes Sud Editions — Text by Pierre Adrian / Photographs by Yann Stofer — 2026.

“In June 1965, Jack Kerouac spent a night in Brittany in search of his roots. In Satori in Paris, ‘Ti Jean’ recounts his quest—a boozy journey that takes him from Montparnasse train station to Brest, of which he sees almost nothing, save for Rue de Siam, the police station, a hotel room, and the bar counters of the neighborhood. Sixty years later, I retraced this journey with my photographer friend Yann Stofer, perhaps unconsciously trying to mend that missed encounter. One question haunted me: what remained of the free spirit of the solitary traveler?” — Pierre Adrian

On the dusty roads of Florida, photographer Yann Stofer and writer Julien Perez followed in the footsteps of Harry Crews, a legendary American author. From this journey emerged a book published by LeMégot editions in 2026. This series of photographs reveals an intimate and fragmented America, marked by silences, faces, and landscapes that still seem to bear the imprint of a vanished presence. Between anonymous motels, half-empty bars, endless roads, and unexpected encounters, the photographer’s gaze oscillates between fascination and disillusionment. His works capture a raw aesthetic where reality merges with the imaginary world of Southern Gothic literature, a movement of which Harry Crews is a key figure. Rather than attempting to reconstruct a biographical truth, these photographs create a tension between the fantasies shaped by literature and the reality of a contemporary world, sometimes far removed from the mythologies that surround it.

Models : Marguerite, Miki, Camille Yembe, Adèle Castillon and Yoa

Stylist : Nora Bordjah

Since 1976, Château Lafite Rothschild has upheld a photographic tradition by inviting renowned artists to cast their gaze on the estate—from Willy Ronis to Richard Avedon, including Irving Penn, Robert Doisneau, and Paolo Roversi. Yann Stofer now joins this prestigious lineage.

Arriving in autumn 2023, when calm follows the grape harvest, he discovers a landscape that feels both familiar and new, where vineyards, gardens, and marshlands form a deeply living environment. Despite unfavorable weather, he transforms challenging light and rain into sources of poetry, exploring alternative approaches to reveal the magic of the place. Guided by instinct, Yann Stofer approaches Lafite as if it were a major reportage, capturing the constant dialogue between humans and nature.

From this immersion, he emerges enriched and fulfilled, leaving behind a series of sensitive photographs that convey the soul of the estate to those who take the time to look.

Within the intimate setting of Hermès workshops, Yann Stofer captures the slow passage of time inherent to craftsmanship and the beauty of precise gestures. His images reveal hands at work, focused gazes, and the precision and patience that give rise to objects crafted to last. Close-ups and portraits tell the story of expertise passed down through generations, where every step matters and where materials—leather, wicker, silk—are respected and elevated.

Behind the scenes, these workshops converse with the surrounding landscapes, recalling how these crafts are rooted in a living territory. A sensitive celebration of rigor, transmission, and the elegance of handmade work.

Models : Solange Smith, Kim Schell and Nina Zem

Stylist : Nora Bordjah

Paris 2024 Olympics had one objective: to revolutionize the Olympic and Paralympic Games by transforming Parisian heritage into an open-air sporting stage. For the occasion, Fisheye Manufacture gave carte blanche to fifteen photographers, including Yann Stofer.

Sport was not their primary field, yet each of them, in their own way, captured with accuracy and poetry the values of Olympism and Paralympism—seizing athletes at the height of their exertion, capturing the emotions that accompanied them in effort, and bearing witness to the iconic transformation of the French capital into a place of celebration and joy. Our fifteen contributors brought back a series of emblematic photographs.

When Hermès commissioned Yann Stofer for a carte blanche on the occasion of the Saut Hermès 2022 jumping competition at the Grand Palais in Paris, the photographer chose an intimate approach, far removed from traditional equestrian photography.

He focused on behind-the-scenes moments rather than the competition itself, entering the very heart of the relationship between horse and groom. He observed the tender gestures of the person who prepares the horse—brushing it, braiding its mane, harnessing it while speaking to it constantly. He moved in as close as possible to the animal to capture sharpened eyelashes, a speckled neck, a mane like drapery.

The riders are reduced to leather-booted legs pressed against a gray coat or a flamboyant drape; bridled heads enter the constrained frame of the lens, highlighting a tamed animality. Better than any discourse, the sharpness of contrasts, the brilliance of colors, and the boldness of the framing convey the technical and aesthetic rigor of the event.

Authors : Yann Stofer & Julien Perez / Release on May 6th 2026

Three years ago, my friend Yann Stofer traveled through Japan from south to north. In Hokkaidō, along its roads and landscapes, he experienced a total freedom that allowed him to approach a profoundly poetic world, such is the fascinating power of snow. It transforms both the visual and the auditory field.

Always working with film, Yann used both 24×36 and a 4×5 large-format camera here; these photographs bear witness to his emotion and his rediscovered serenity. Through his gaze, landscapes are rebuilt, slipping free from the terrestrial order. One dreams of immersion, of breathing in nature to the fullest. Yann experienced even more: Japan in its mysterious dimension.

Everything seems to take on another form. A dried flower encountered along a path appears like an ideogram. Everything becomes graphic in this drift he surrendered to. Niseko, Hakodate, Obihiro, Kushiro, Abashiri, Asahikawa—each like vanishing lines and pockets of time... We glide with him over the untouched, unmarked slopes of Asahidake, as if overwhelmed by the magic of this country. His photographs reflect his state of wonder-filled surrender: Hokkaidō is blue, white, and gold.

Text by François Simon.

“We were waiting for summer to finally arrive, you in front of the house making us laugh as you tried to catch flies. To rediscover the damp grass of mornings without alarm clocks, lunches that stretch into dinner in the shade of the linden trees, starry skies, a glass in hand, welcoming sleep. As we awaited a birth, we had not imagined your absence.”

Inside the vehicle, the subjects remain perceptive as the landscape streams past and the car gathers speed. Bathed in winter sunlight, images of sleepers follow one another; faces become a malleable substance, awaiting form. A sense of suspense emerges and, as is often the case, it stems less from narrative construction than from the intensification of tension.

A House Is Not a Home immediately presents a vulnerable subject, lacking control over their own representation, carried across vast landscapes by unconscious forces. It is in the attention paid to this form of somnambulism that Yann Stofer’s work finds its aesthetic impulse: the intrepid advances with eyes closed.

Into the loops of memory shaped by the dream-making machine blend the muffled perceptions of shifting light, of the vehicle changing lanes on a snow-covered highway, of its accelerations and slowdowns. The intimate—the sense of “home”—takes on a variable geometry.

Text by Julien Perez.

In 2015, during the final edition of the International Sport Dance Championships held at the Agora in Évry-Courcouronnes, in France—before its demolition and reconstruction—photographer Yann Stofer was invited to contribute to the event through the A.S Évry dance club, of which his father is a member. He agreed on the condition of having complete creative freedom, and set up an improvised micro-studio: a colored backdrop taped to a wall in a corridor connecting the changing rooms to the dance hall, between the cafeteria and the restrooms.

From rehearsals through to the end of the competition, he asked dancers to sit for a few seconds on a chair: in sportswear or performance costumes, before or after makeup, before or after taking the floor. This approach resulted in a series to which he feels particularly attached, for its intimate quality and the strength of its portraits—an approach that likely could not have existed anywhere else but in this setting.