Baptiste de Ville d’Avray is a french photographer from Paris. In 2006, he traveled to Bamako, Mali, for one year where he co-created the photo platform Afriqueinvisu. He had his first exhibition back to France in 2007, and started to work with press and corporations. He pursued his trip to Morocco for 4 years and finally settle in Lisbon, Portugal, where he continues to visit Africa.
Baptiste started photography in 2004 when traveling the world. Once he got back he wanted to explore the medium, and a neighbor offered him a film camera. After testing several cameras, he became very passionate. He likes to be able to play without stopping with the border between reality and fiction.
After two first projects focusing on Morocco, the body of work So Far Away, yet so Close is the result of his trips to Morocco between 2012 and 2016, during a boom in urban development – a place that is resolutely contemporary and yet photographed in a timeless manner. Baptiste was soon attracted by its unique Atlantic atmosphere and its coastline spanning thousands of kilometers, between the Algerian and Mauritanian borders. This country became a character in its own right within Baptiste de Ville d’Avray’s world. This was the starting point for playing on the fringes of his practice, by moving away from a more documentary and serial approach. In each photo, time appears to slow down, with each of the titles reconstituting the pieces of a puzzle to form a fable.
