Ajax loader

2010 EDITION

July 3rd - September 19th

Jean Pigozzi - Keith Richards, Meadowlands Arena, New Jersey, USA, 1981

Jean Pigozzi

I’m somewhat dyslexic and have no talent for drawing, so writing and illustrating a journal doesn’t come naturally to me, but taking photographs always has. I started snapping photos at seven or eight, and fifty years later, I’m still at it. I mainly take pictures of my friends, people around me, buildings, landscapes, the food that makes me hungry, the people I admire, the women that I long for, but also dogs, trees, icebergs and quite often self-portraits. Not that I find myself particularly fascinating or attractive, but the advantage is that I’m always available, I never complain about bad lighting that makes me look old, or say: ‘Why are you putting the camera so close to my nose?’ I also like to pose with celebrities, I find that more fun and more challenging than asking them for an autograph. Until four years ago I used film, then the X-ray machines at airports ruined so many of my negatives that I finally switched to digital. Digital is a different experience, perhaps too easy, but cheaper and faster, therefore well adapted to keeping a journal. I plan to keep on photographing for as long as I can.

Jean Pigozzi



Exhibition produced with the support of BMW.

Printing by Box, New York City.

Framing by Circad, Paris.

Jean Pigozzi

Born in 1952 in France.


Jean Pigozzi is an Italian businessman who graduated from Harvard in 1974 and now lives between Switzerland and a few other places, including the jungle in Panama.

Jean started taking photographs as a 7-year old and he had his first exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris in 1974, then a solo show at the Light gallery in NY in 1980, another at the Gagosian gallery, N.Y in 1990, and recently a group show “Pigozzi and the Paparazzi” at the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin in 2008.

In 1989, with the French curator André Magnin, he started what has now become the world's largest and most famous collection of contemporary African Art which is regularly featured in major museums around the world (Huston Museum of Fine Arts, Guggenheim Bilbao, Tate Modern London, etc...)

In 1996, Jean Pigozzi started buying land in and around Bahia Honda, Panama, mainly for conservation purposes. In partnership with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Royal Botanical Society in Madrid, Jean created the Liquid Jungle Lab that is bringing high-technology to conservation. In 2008, Jean started a high end fashion company – LimoLand that is specializing in making clothes for ROM : Rich Old Men. Jean is still taking photographs everyday and a new book, “Catalogue Déraisoné”, published by Steidl/Dangin, will be presented this summer in Arles.

Some of his previous books are : “Pigozzi’s Journal of the Seventies” at Doubleday (1980), A Short Visit to Planet Earth” at Aperture (1990)