chalet with a crooked tree in front of it. I called it << Life >>. Because you
can be born crooked and make yourself a straight life. Or the opposite. You
can be born in a straight family and you become crooked. Each photo has a story...
>> Michel de Yougoslavie is a photographer who tells stories. His, the tree of
his life and of his family, is prestigious. Non ruling Prince, Michel de Yougoslavie
grew up near Paris, where he was seeing his paternal grandfather: Prince Paul
of Yugoslavia, the Prince Regent of Yugoslavia from 1934 until 1941. As a child
Michel would see his illustrious forefather every week end. He was also spending
his summers with his family in their house near Florence, which had been inherited
from a Russian Aunt. All his family was in exile, scattered between France,
Italy, Portugal and Switzerland.Very early in age, Michel de Yougoslavie learned
to travel through Europe, and heard a lot of stories. << My grand father did not
want us to speak Serbian, because he was afraid that people may think we were
communist spies. He was traumatized by the war. You also heard strange stories
about murders of the Yugoslav diaspora members by the communist regime after
the war. >> In his early years, Michel de Yougoslavie also learns to look. The long
walks in the castle of Versailles with his mother. The classical elegance of perspectives
and volumes...<< Since we were not rich, rather than buying, my mother was
often changing the place of the furniture. Volumes and perspectives were always
evolving... >> From his mother, Michel de Yougoslavie descends from a family all
the way as illustrious: Umberto II, his maternal grandfather was the last King of
Italy; he reigned 35 days, in 1946. Exiled also, he lived in Portugal while his wife
Marie-Josée went to Switzerland in Gy, near Geneva. Michel would regularly visit
them. Everywhere in Europe, Michel de Yougoslavie is at home. The fall of the
wall in 1989 could have opened the perspective of a return in the former Yugoslavia.
But Michel de Yougoslavie, freshly graduated from the European Business
School in Paris, leaves to live the American Dream. After six months of training
in a bank in Mexico City, and six more months in Brazil, he stops for a vacation in
the United States: << I was in Florida, and after a week on the beach I got bored.
I then started to work in the luxury real estate , a bit by hazard, and I stayed 10
years. >> A decade of successful commercial deals were followed by ten more
years in New York. These were sumptuous times during which Michel de Yougoslavie
continues to travel intensively, and watches. << At each trip I would visit art
fairs. I was reunited with a whole group of friends in all these large cities...During
these years, I would sharpen my look on art, paintings, but also on photography.
>> During 20 years, constant traveller, Michel always has his camera with him. A
digital Leica, with which he works between one and two hours a day. << I have a
daily discipline. I choose a precise theme like << fruit in the city >> or << urban
perspectives >>... Then I go out and take photos. >> His photos are like him:
well groomed, rigorous, where every detail is thought of, a bit << like a painting
>>. Very curious, Michel de Yougoslavie is a photographer of detail and proximity.
Refl ection of a open mind as well as slightly offset, whose humor is always
present. After 20 years of silent pursuit, Michel de Yougoslavie finally gets out of
the woods and exposes his work for the first time in Geneva in 2014. His photographs,
limited to 7 prints only, are already a success.
Catherine Nivez
Journalist in Geneva www.suisse-entrepreneurs.com
