The image as moment in history


As a photographer, Jean-Matthieu Domon is primarily interested in the transformation of the landscape through human intervention, from the construction of architectural works (such as Renzo Piano’s Rome Auditorium and San Giovanni Rotondo Basilica) to heritage landmarks and social housing (Pays de Montbéliard, where he was born in 1965, Rome, Frosinone), from sculptural art (figures and monuments from the Vatican’s St Peter’s Basilica, Capitoline Museum and Palestrina Museum) to tales of water shores (Gland Valley and Lazio coast) and immersions into the architectures of the Landriana Gardens and other European botanical gardens.

Thus, the positive values of work and spirit become images as testimonies of history.

Another aspect of his endeavor is the investigation of people and their psychological conditions at the time of the photographic shoot. He traces his narrative with the same applied and caring hand, as taught by the American portraitist Arturo Patten, one of his masters, for his portraits in Sierre, Biarritz or Marbella as for those of Peugeot-Citroën or Véolia workers or the immigrants of Tivoli, the town where he lives.

His artistic and professional career has been the subject of exhibitions (France, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Japan), books (monographs and volumes), printed texts and articles, and television broadcasts.

Jean-Matthieu Domon prefers a delicately blurred B&W that nevertheless contains strong contrasts. In his prints, he knows how to emphasize all chromatic arrays; the grays in his pictures reveal rich colors.


Antonio Bruni