MAJICMIJU BIO

"If you take a honest picture, I'll know a bit more about yourself"

Vincent Peters, photographer

Born and raised in Geneva, Switzerland, Majicmiju - Michel Juvet , before being a full time passionate photographer has been a recognized economic and financial markets expert and banker. For him, analyzing markets and taking photos is one and the same : it is about getting the right angle, timing and lightning, and understanding hidden behaviors and emotions. His interests are wide but he likes to focus on fashion , portraits, concerts , dance and street photography . With his usual off-center perspective, Michel seeks to capture life through an unexpected angle.

Michel started photography at age of 16 and learned photography mainly by making on his own, following his own instinct. However to improve his light technique he took private lessons in New York with Andrew French, professor at NYU, who learned him studio lighting. Interested in fashion photography he then took lessons with the famous fashion photographer Vincent Peters in order to ameliortate his way of catching fashion models.

An award-winning photographer, Michel took home the Geneva prize for Literature in 2012 from the Société Littéraire de Genève for a book entitled Meme le ciel ne pleure plus ( Even the Skies Weep no More ).After a trip to south Kivu in RDC, where he was deeply moved by what he saw , Michel decided to publish a photo / text volume on sexual violence in this region. All proceeds of this book sales helped to finance a rehabilitation program in the DRC. The book was prefaced by the President of the Swiss Confederation, Mrs Micheline Calmy Rey

Michel received two other prizes , one from the Geneva City in 2017 for photographing four museums of Geneva (MAH) , and another one in 2016 from the Mobile Photography Award company for having taken a mobile picture of London the day of the Brexit, called "after Brexit".

He published three other books :

Paléo Portraits en Pieds, a book in 2016 about the feet and shoes of singers; covering the Swiss festival Paléo as a magazine photographer he had the idea to shoot systematically the feet and foots of singers on stage as that was the first thing he could see from the photographer position he had. The purpose was to try to guess who was the singer and to find other emotions transmitted through the body.

the Veremonda resurrection in 2016. Called by a magazine to shoot in Torino a trio of artists who were about to re-create an opera not shown since 1776, Michel proposed them to cover the whole story of this re-creation. The book is about the Opera, and how to create an opera. It has brought him to shoot from Torino, Roma, through Venezia to South Carolina where the Première happened.

And in 2019, was released Profond Encounters, a tale of exploration in French Polynesia with Under The Pole expedition. Michel joined the explorers in French Polynesia and lived with them on their boat to shoot about the purpose of their deep diving activities; but it is a book as well on Nature, and people he met on the island Rangiroa.

Otherwise, during all these last 10 years he was called by Swiss magazines who published his portraits of famous people in arts, finance, education, sports. Michel was a few times published by Vogue magazine on Photovogue. He followed as well big sport events like Xtreme of Verbier where he could catch stiking photos of free riders and emotional portraits, or like the Tour du Léman à l’aviron, following theses rawlers for a day and night on the lake, here again to show he effort and the emotions.

For the last 3 years , three experiences in covering artists were very important to him :

he covered the Rwanda / French singer Gael Faye during his French music tour; it was about catching his emotions on stage, and backstage in difficult lights using his experience as a concert photographer.

he followed the french dancer Jann Gallois in different theaters as dance was his previous passion when he was 15-22 years old. Catching the movement in a photo was the challenge. He suceeded as one of his photo taken at Theatre national de Chaillot in Paris has been published by numerous french newspapers

he went to New York for shooting a super GUESS fashion model; 3 days of hard work with 2 assistants in NYC and the liberty to choose the places. Photos were published on the model and Guess instagram accounts; The sucess of these photos pushed his audience on his instagram to 75’000 followers

Recently after having shot a lot of models and doing portraits Michel decided to move more on his artistic way. Not only shootig but creating something on top of it. Shooting is an art, catching the right moment is an art, but Michel has alway thought that it was not a creation. He wanted propose something originial, and using the photo as a medium

He had many times thought about photography as the art of painting , trying to bring imaginations or dreams on his photos and reducing the clarity of the pixels, to get closer to the impresionists. Michel wanted to go further the reality catching of perfectly clear photos. He embarked then on a project of blurry black and white photos of iconic places in the world.

A blurry photo is technically complicated to realize but he thinks it is a way of making people dreaming when looking at the photos. It is probably a philosophical way as well to show that life can be clear of blurry.

"Shooting photos is an emotional need; sometimes i could shoot closed eyes; my photos are alway honest"

Majicmiju