Laurent Castellani is a French photographer from Paris and Île de Ré known for minimalist, emotionally charged images shot in natural light.,After more than 15 years as an art director in Paris, he moved from filmmaking into photography, developing a cinematographic, macro-photography-driven style.,,His Mulholland Drive series, dark and dreamlike images of models in urban settings inspired by David Lynch, marked a turning point in his career.,
As a child he was struck by Robert Doisneau's photograph 'The Kiss,' seen as a poster in a shop in La Rochelle.He began making films before turning to photography, and his early films for Bose and Bang & Olufsen, noted for their Terrence Malick-like style, led Netflix to contact him in 2018. He exhibited at Paris Photo Off in Paris and published a photo book, Rêverie, that sold internationally.,
Agoraphobic and unable to travel, he shoots in isolation using only natural light, working mornings and evenings to capture it.,His macro-photography aesthetic is defined by framing: he strips each image down to remove anything unnecessary, a signature drawn from his love of architecture and clean paintings.In his own words, “my work unfolds between two fields: fashion and beauty photography, which I've practiced for years, and a more sculptural, introspective approach, where the body becomes matter, symbol, abstraction.”
He entered the NFT space because it let him reach collectors without traveling, and found that his photographs could stand on their own without being tied to a brand or product.Beginning in 2022, he released the We are Dreamers series on Manifold, alongside individual pieces on SuperRare and OpenSea.He has described generative art combined with AI as a trend he expects to leave an impression, despite it lying outside his own practice.
