Yvan  is a photographer based in Nice. He photographs everyday life, spontaneous moments, and things as they are. The camera accompanies him daily, becoming a way of observing, recording, and slowing down.

During our conversation, we spoke about photography as freedom, the value of practice, swimming, archives, and the moments that already exist before a photograph is taken.

When we asked if there was a philosophy behind his work, he paused for a moment. “Not really,” he said. At least not one he could name. What appeared throughout our conversation was something simpler: intuition. Taking his camera into the street, walking, observing, looking, recording, enjoying.

He said that your first ten thousand photographs are going to be bad. What matters is what you keep returning to. What you dedicate time to every day, that is what eventually becomes part of you.

He photographs the everyday and the spontaneous. Yvan photographs what is already there. No direction, no staging, just the decision to notice.

He studied photography at 17 years old, when his mother signed him up for a photography class. Since then, he has always kept it alongside other work. That distance is deliberate. Not being dependent on photography allows him to remain free and photograph only what interests him.

The camera goes everywhere. Every day.

There is one thing he said that stayed with us: a photograph is a lie. The planned ones. The organised ones. Those are scenes. What interests him is the opposite. The spontaneous, the casual, the moment that already existed before he arrived.He does not direct the people he photographs. He does not need to. What people already bring with them, what they carry, what they communicate on their own, is enough.

He keeps everything. When he can, he prints the photographs and lays them out. Connections appear. Colours, gestures, movements. Things that group themselves together without intention.

He also swims.Every day, just like photography. For him, swimming is a form of meditation. You do not come out the same person after a swim.

When we asked about influences, he started naming books from his shelves. Joel Meyerowitz, Claude Nori, Fred Herzog, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Gordon Parks, Garry Winogrand, Joseph Rodriguez. At some point, Oscar Niemeyer also appeared in the conversation. Photography, architecture, books. Different worlds, connected by a similar attention to everyday life and to the act of looking.

There is something playful in the way he photographs. In the colours, the movement, and perhaps in a certain refusal to leave childhood behind.

Photography, for him, is a way of stopping time. And a form of freedom.