Bio
Christian Chaize, a French artist born in 1960, lives and works just outside of Lyon, France. An autodidact, he cultivated his talent in this culturally rich city, home of the Lumière Brothers (the inventors of cinema) and a short distance from the rooftop where Nicéphore Niépce made the very first photographic image. In 1992, Chaize was awarded the Prix European Panorama de Kodak for Young European Photographer at Les Rencontres d'Arles. In addition to international recognition for his fine art photography, he has enjoyed a successful career as a commercial photographer for over three decades.
In the early 2000's, Chaize became captivated by a stretch of coastline in Portugal. Since 2004, using film in his medium and large format cameras, he has honored a personal commitment to photographing one particular beach from a consistent vantage point. Taking its "portrait" at various times of the day or night, over the course of several months, year after year, has culminated in his most renowned series: Praia Piquinia. It is the subject of Chaize’s first monograph, TIME & TIDE, published in 2013 by Chronicle Books. This ongoing body of work has thus far been the subject of two museum shows in Portugal, as well as various international gallery exhibitions and art fairs. It has been featured in publications such as Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal Magazine, Collector Daily, The Morning News, The Collector’s Guide to New Art Photography Vol. 2, BLINK MAGAZINE, Architectural Digest, and Elle Decor.
Other color series by Chaize include To Praia Grande (Portugal) and Paradis (the Seychelles). Both have been the subject of exhibitions in the USA and Europe, as have two black & white series, La Lune (the moon writ XL) and TEN (smaller platinum-palladium still-lifes). Though the latter two manifest significant aesthetic departures from Chaize's "beachscapes," they, too, reveal a tireless concentration and exploration of a singular subject matter. Principally influenced by the painter Giorgio Morandi, Chaize also finds wisdom in the words of French author Marcel Proust: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”