Jean Clavel is a Franco-Swiss photographer born in 1995. Trained in economics, he discovered photography in 2015 during a university exchange programme in Buenos Aires, borrowing his mother's film camera — the same one she had used at twenty, while accompanying a journalist friend on assignment in Lebanon in 1982. That first encounter with analogue photography would prove decisive.
After a period working in start-up development in Paris, he devoted every spare hour to his craft.
From 2015 until his departure for Greece in the spring of 2024, the darkroom was the only place where he felt fully alive. He trained in silver gelatin printing under Stéphane Cormier — master printer to Depardon and Salgado, among others — who welcomed him into his laboratory on rue Taylor in Paris. He later pursued further training with Elias Cosindas in Greece. At the close of 2024, he chose to settle in Kypseli, a neighbourhood of Athens, and set out to traverse mainland Greece by motorcycle, Leica M7 and Mamiya 645 Pro TL in hand. From that journey, A Sitting Poetry was born.
Trained to the exacting standards of the silver gelatin process, he controls the entire arc of the image — from the moment of exposure through the development bath to the final print on baryta paper. A Sitting Poetry is his second body of work; his first series, Au Crépuscule, was exhibited in Paris. His work came to wider attention with the inaugural exhibition in Athens in September 2025, covered by Kathimerini. He lives and works between Paris and Athens.
Exhibitions
Au Crépuscule — Paris, September 2024
A Sitting Poetry — Athens, September 2025
A Sitting Poetry — Galerie Carpeaux, Paris, June 25–28, 2026
Press
Kathimerini — "The Silent Witness of Human Presence", September 2025
