Yann Stofer was born in 1977. Photographer, musician, and director, he regularly collaborates for the international press (M le Monde, New Yorker, New York Times, Vanity Fair) or for major advertising campaigns (Hermès, Nike, Uber, etc.). At the same time, he has joined the Hermès collection and developed several personal projects that have been the subject of books: "Hokkaido is blue white & gold" (2022), "Harry Crews, Gainesville" (2020), and to be published in 2023, "Japanese only" (ed. La Manufacture de livres) and "thick blood, into the Japanese’s untouchables class", in collaboration with writer Jérôme Schmidt.
Prior to photography, Yann Stofer worked as a drummer, first with local bands in Bordeaux, then touring for over 10 years in Europe and the USA with the electro-rock band Adam Kesher - collaborating on records and advertising music with Cassius, Phoenix, A-Trak, Agnès B, Yves Saint Laurent and Chanel, among others.
In addition to music, for a time he moved closer to directing, working on film sets in the 2000s as first assistant director. Close to the cameras and cinematographers, he sharpens his eye and perfects his craft. He documents the adventures of his band during ten intense years on the road. He frantically captures fragments of scenes lived or dreamt between two cities, two concerts, which he publishes like a road book, in his first book A house is not a home (2013) published by Kaiserin.
His experiences shape his approach: dynamic, participatory and intimate, bypassing the conventions of classical or documentary storytelling. He was soon called upon to produce reports and portraits for magazines and album covers. Regular commissions took him to every continent, whether for the press (The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Vice), advertising (Heineken, Uber, Nike), or documentary production (Le Monde, Air France Magazine, Nouvel Obs). Accustomed to traveling, he develops an imaginary world of the road, resonating with a state of perpetual mobility. Instinctive, he provokes exchange with others, quickly seizing the heart of an action, the atmosphere of a place, placing his image as close as possible to his subjects.
For the past ten years, he has been working on several personal projects:
Poursuite, a disquieting visual intrigue set in a desert town on the Costa Blanca (Spain) with his photographer friend Julien Magre and put into words by novelist and reporter Alexandre Kauffmann.
Évry danse, a series of portraits of ballroom dancers during the Internationals, surprisingly staged between the changing rooms and the dance floor against the backdrop of an improvised studio. Since 2018, he has been conducting a photographic investigation (Tu ne peux pas toujours tuer tout le monde à la fin) into the noir novelist Harry Crews and his town, Gainesville (Florida, USA), composing a biography of the man through the atmosphere of the place. (This project was supported by the DRAC Nouvelle-Aquitaine).
His photographs are regularly exhibited in France and abroad and are part of private collections, including Hermès since 2018. In early 2020, he produced a series of images in the enigmatic landscapes of Japan's far north: Hokkaido, exhibited at the Promenades Photographiques of Vendôme in 2020 and the subject of his latest book "Hokkaido is blue white & gold" published in 2022.