Each photography is a story... << I made a photo in which you see a wooden 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. Reflection 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
