For French photographer Christophe Jacrot, bad weather is an opportunity to tell poetic photographic stories through the effects of weather phenomena such as rain showers and snow flurries, as Peter Dench finds
Aged 15, Christophe Jacrot was gifted a small camera. Enthused, he went to the basement, set up a darkroom and set about his ambition to achieve strong photographs. Three years later he put the camera away and after a short but successful foray into filmmaking, changed direction to a career in real estate. That early photographic seed had embedded itself deep into Jacrot and aged 45 it re-germinated.
He took a four-month course in photojournalism then landed a job with a travel firm seeking 600 sunny photos of Paris. He sold 400 despite the dreary weather that spring. Rejecting the sun in the City of Light, he relentlessly photographed Paris in the rain, culminating in his book Paris Sous La Pluie (Editions du Chêne, 17 September 2008). Fifteen photos of Paris in the rain sold out at an exhibition at the Lucernaire arthouse venue; a year later he had similar success at a gallery on the Rue de Seine.
Cinematic tribute
Enveloped in the eye of the storm, his career has flourished. Lost in the Beauty of Bad Weather (LitBoBW) is Jacrot’s homage to the abominable. Published by teNeues Verlag GmbH (September 2023) with 240 pages and 150+ images, it’s a beast of a hardback book showcasing what can be missed when you raise the umbrella, pop up the rain coat collar, look down at the pavement and dash for shelter. Each page is a cinematic tribute to rain, fog, mist, snow, wind: from the UK to the USA, Russia, India, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Georgia, Japan and Greenland, to name a few. Natural disasters like tsunamis don’t interest Jacrot, nor does light rain or drizzle.
LitBoBW is an aesthetic triumph achieved by overcoming technical and physical challenges including low-light conditions. ‘For me, given my visual choices, working on foot with a long break is impossible. For my images, I like to fix the elements, the rain, the snow. There is often a lot of wind so I have to work at a fairly fast speed, ideally 1/125sec, 1/60th possibly, the rain or snow will be partly blurred, by choice or not,’ he explains.
Jacrot trusts his Canon EOS 5D Mark II, III and EOS R often paired with an EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM to deal with low light. ‘So at night it’s complicated. Fortunately, sensors are making great progress. Recently, working at ISO 1600 has become possible with acceptable image degradation. ISO 3200 or even 6200 also becomes possible, provided there is little retouching in dark areas. The other big problem with night photography is the strong possible contrast between a lit area, a street lamp and a dar
