Romain Berger, 33, a queer photographer from France: “I want to make people dream and get excited.”
With a background in film and theatre, French photographer Romain Berger has “long been fascinated by images, popular culture, stereotypes and gender issues.”
“My work is offbeat, kitschy, colourful and gently provocative. I deliberately take clichés from gay culture and twist them to show the best and worst of our world (loneliness, superficiality, overconsumption, violence, addiction, sex, politics). My characters are marginalized, excluded or singled out (gay, women, transgender, drag queens) who, for a single shot, become heroes/fighters. They are looking for a way out, they want to be stars,” he says in an interview with THE FIGHT.
“Sensuality is present in each of my pictures, I like to fantasize the world, to put a finger on what disturbs and above all, I want to make people dream and get excited. It is important for me to trivialize homosexuality and affirm my identity, while bringing strong messages, without falling into pathos or melodrama.”
“I am a jack of all trades. I create the staging, cast the models, make the set, dress the set and finally, I think about the lighting. It takes me between two and three weeks to make a new photograph… I am also a member of the queer collective Balaclava.Q “
See more of his work at www.romainberger-photography.com
