Frédéric Lecloux
Biography
Frédéric Lecloux is a Belgian-French photographer, writer and publisher born in 1972. A self-taught artist, he graduated from the École nationale supérieure de la photographie in Arles in 2016 and obtained a degree in Nepali language from INALCO in 2021.
His photographs have been distributed by Agence VU’ since 2003. His archive entered the Nicéphore Niépce Museum in Chalon-sur-Saône in 2024.
His photographic writing finds its raison d’être in the slow pace of his relationship with others and the slow pace of the photographic gesture that arises from this relationship. Having long drawn his visual vocabulary from the reality of Nepal and the work of Nicolas Bouvier, his photography has recently narrowed its focus to the banality of his immediate environment.
Frédéric Lecloux is the author of some ten books of texts and photographs, including Au désert. Migrations Népal-Qatar (2022), Territoires du cinématographe (2022), Népal. Epiphanies of the Everyday (2017), and L’Usure du monde, A Tribute to Nicolas Bouvier (2008), all published by Le Bec en l’air. He also published a collection of sonnets entitled La grande Route par tous les temps with Arnaud Bizalion in 2017, updated and expanded in 2026. He is the author of several texts on photography, notably for Cloé Harent (forthcoming, 2027), Marin Driguez (exhibition text, 2025), Albert Londres et la photographie (afterword, Le Bec en l’air, 2023), Denis Brihat in Indes 1955 (portfolio and exhibition, 2021) and Bonne année (afterword, Le Bec en l’air, 2017). He runs a blog featuring critical and analytical essays, interviews and translations of writings on photography.
He also co-directed a research and creation thesis with Natacha Cyrulnik at the École d’Arles (2021) and co-directed, with sociologist Valérie Cuzol, the film Quel Côté de l’absence ? (2018).
For Le Bec en l’air, he has contributed to the publication of several books, including Jean-Pierre Sudre’s La Vie silencieuse de l’Industrie (2025), +Photographie. Les Acquisitions des institutions publiques (7 vols., since 2020), Les Oignons de Denis Brihat (2023), Ergy Landau (2022), Jerusalem to the Last Path by David Sauveur (2021), and L’Oiseau noir perché à droite dans ma tête by Jean-Christian Bourcart (2019).
Recipient of an Allocation d’installation d’atelier in 2025 and of an Aide individuelle à la création in 2024 for his research on photography in the Anthropocene, both awarded by the Drac Hauts-de-France, as well of two ADAGP Research grants for his projects ‘L’explication, la paix, l’oubli’ in 2025 and ‘Entrer en matière’ in 2024, Frédéric Lecloux was also the first guest of the residence ‘Les Nouvelles oubliées’ proposed by rn7 in 2019, a recipient of the Leverhulme Trust Artist in Residence Grant (United Kingdom) in 2016 and of the CNAP’s Documentary photography grant in 2015.
Having led numerous courses and workshops focusing on the uses of photography – including in Nepal, at the Rencontres d’Arles and in schools (2010–2020) – and having subsequently created and run a writing workshop for photographers with VU’ Éducation (2018–2026), he now works independently to mentor photographers in the process of turning professionals, and is purusing his writing workshop at the Rencontres d’Arles (2026) and at the Adagp (2027).
Statement
Downloads
Curriculum (last updated in October 2022)
A portrait (compulsory mention: Birgunj, Nepal, 2016, photo © Manish Paudel)
A black and white portrait (compulsory mention: Nyons, France, 2017, photo © Florian Tourneux)
Exhibitions
fredericlecloux.com/exhibitions/
Contact
fred [at] fredericlecloux.com