Biography

Jean-Sébastien Monzani is a Swiss and French fulltime freelance photographer and graphic-designer born in 1975 who is specialized in portrait photography. He passed his PhD in Computer Graphics in 2002 in EPFL, Switzerland but his artistic skills are completely self-taught. Starting creating photo-series in the early 2000, his works matured in a story-like vision of photo sessions.

Elegance, simplicity, a strong sense of composition and emotions are key elements in his work. His images are often constructed as photo-series - something between fashion photography and movie storyboards. This sequence of shots usually tells a little story but each image also works independently. Since he often tries to convey an atmosphere in his photos, he mainly shoots on-location, almost exclusively in Lausanne (Switzerland) where he lives. He doesn't shoot professional models but rather selects regular persons that will carry the emotions he looks for.

Besides photography, he has extended over the years his artistic skills to illustration, graphic design and more recently short movies.

Jean-Sébastien Monzani


Né le 09.04.1975
Nationalité Suisse et Française
Langues: Français / Anglais

Born on Apr 9th 1975
Swiss and French
Speaks: French / English

Inscription registre du Commerce CH-550.1.053.693-9

Compétences

Design graphique

Conception d'affiches, de brochures, de publicités et sites web

Photographie

Portraits, séries d'images narratives
Excellentes compétences en retouche (donne des cours Photoshop)

Logiciels

Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash

Développement web

PHP / MySQL, XHTML, CSS, CMS Made Simple...

Publications, Illustrations and Exhibitions

2009

  • October 2009: Cover-page and 2 pages article in Photo Techniques magazine Mastering Digital Photography special issue (USA)
  • September 2009: Cover-page and 6 pages portfolio in Photo Digital magazine #65 (Istambul, Turkey)
  • July 2009: I am one of the winners of Datacolor's contest Colors of my Life. Publication in the corresponding book
  • July 2009: My movie "entretemps" is broadcasted on cable-TV Souvenirs from earth
  • June 2009: My book Suspended Time is officially selected by Blurb.com compagny to showcase their services to clients
  • February 2009: TV interview for TVRL (Swiss National Post stamps design)

2008

2003-2007

  • La Republicca (Italia) - Photographer feature Sept 2007
  • Art:PartTwo international exhibition in Bucharest in March 2007 (selected as one of the artists) - Interview in the exhibition catalogue
  • .PSD Magazine (Poland, UK, Fr, Germany, Italy...) Dec 2006, March 2007
  • Digital Photo (UK) Dec 2006, March 2007
  • Digital Photographer (Ukr) Jul 2005, Jan 2006
  • 17 Fotografen, 17 Zelfportretten (Amsterdam) May 2005 (international group exhibition)
  • Photo Magazine (Hong Kong) Jun 2004
  • Digital Photo Magazine (Fr) Jan 2004
  • Contribution to An advanced guide to digital photography (V.Oliver, Ava ed.)
  • Illustration for Basics Photography - Lighting (D.Präkel, Ava/Academia ed.)
  • Illustration for Basics Photography - Composition (D.Präkel, Ava/Academia ed.)
  • Illustration for Basics Photography - Capturing color (Phil Malpas, Ava/Academia ed.)

Formation

  • Graphiste, photographe et webdesigner freelance
  • 2002-2007 : Maître-Assistant à l'Université de Lausanne (HEC) (cours Visual Basic, HTML, CSS, gestion de documents multimédia)
  • 2002 : Doctorat en Infographie à l'Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne (Thème : animation de personnages autonomes en 3D dimensions)
  • 1998 : Diplôme d'Ingénieur en Informatique à l'EPFL (Travail de diplôme : Capture et retouche sur personnages en 3D)

Distinctions

  • August 2009: My short movie "Another life, another day" won 2nd place at the Kino Pip-Corn short-movie contest on August 22nd 2009.
  • May 2009: My book Suspended time has been selected by blurb.com to showcase their products.
  • Feb. 2009: I have been commissioned with three other graphic designers by the Swiss National Post to create new stamps
  • My short movie "Un rendez-vous trop stylé" won 2nd place at the Lausanne Estivale, Open air Mon-Repos festival (Sept. 5th 2008)
  • 1st price at igop.net photo contest
  • Photo of the week on photo.net
  • Numerous Daily Deviations (best pic. award) on deviantart.com

Selected scientific publications

  • Bendahan, Samuel , Camponovo, Giovanni , Monzani, Jean-Sebastien and Pigneur, Yves Negotiation in Technology Landscapes: An Actor-Issue Analysis, Journal of Management Information Systems Vol. 21 No. 4 , Spring 2005
  • Jean-Sébastien Monzani, Samuel Bendahan, Yves Pigneur Decision and Visualization for Negotiation. Proceedings of the 37th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'04) - Track 1, 2004 (Best paper award)
  • J.-S. Monzani, A. Caicedo and D. Thalmann Integrating Behavioural Animation Techniques, Eurographics 2001
  • J.-S. Monzani, P. Baerlocher, R. Boulic, D. Thalmann, Using an Intermediate Skeleton and Inverse Kinematics for Motion Retargeting, Eurographics 2000
  • Marcelo Kallmann, Jean-Sébastien Monzani, Angela Caicedo and Daniel Thalmann ACE: A Platform for the Real Time simulation of Virtual Human Agents, Eurographics Workshop on Animation and Simulation 2000