Christophe Jacrot

French photographer Christophe Jacrot, born in 1960, has built his practice around a simple but unusual subject: weather. Living and working in Paris, he photographs cities and landscapes during rain, snow, storms and fog, using difficult conditions to change how familiar places look and feel. His interest in photography began as a teenager, but he later moved into filmmaking, directing several award-winning short films. He returned to photography in his forties, following a commission to photograph Paris for a tourist guide, an assignment that unexpectedly became the starting point for his artistic practice.

The Paris commission asked Jacrot to produce sunny images, but the weather had other plans. Instead of waiting for better conditions, he began photographing the city in the rain, drawn to the unusual light, reflections and atmosphere it created. The resulting work became his first exhibition in 2007 and led to the publication of Paris in the Rain. From there, Jacrot developed a way of working that depends heavily on climatic conditions. He researches places that interest him, follows weather forecasts and waits for the particular combination of location, light and weather that can transform a scene.

This approach has taken Jacrot far beyond Paris. His series Wet Scotland, Blizzard and Snjór explore different landscapes under rain, snow and fog, while his photographs from Iceland focus on the starkness of winter and the contrast between white landscapes and small traces of colour or human presence. Iceland has become a particularly important place in his work: Jacrot has returned there repeatedly, sometimes visiting the same location several times in search of the right conditions. In Blizzard 1, snow and fog reduce the landscape to a quieter, more limited field of vision, where buildings, roads and figures appear almost isolated from their surroundings.

Jacrot’s fascination with weather is equally apparent in his photographs of cities. In New York, rain and snow can obscure the familiar energy of the city, while extreme conditions can alter it completely. During Hurricane Sandy in 2012, a large part of Manhattan was left without electricity, leading Jacrot to photograph the city in near darkness for his N.Y. IN BLACK series. His more recent New York sous la neige – nouvelles images continues his interest in the city during winter, focusing on streets and buildings transformed by snow. Across these works, weather becomes more than a backdrop: it changes the way the city is experienced.

What connects Jacrot’s different series is his willingness to wait for conditions that other photographers might avoid. Heavy rain, snowstorms and fog make photographing more difficult, but they also introduce elements that cannot easily be controlled. He often returns to the same places when a first attempt does not produce the image he wants.

The result is a body of work in which familiar environments become quieter, more cinematic and sometimes almost unfamiliar. Influenced by photographers such as Saul Leiter, as well as painting and film, Jacrot uses weather to create images that sit somewhere between observation and atmosphere, always grounded in a real place but shaped by the conditions of the moment.