Neal Raphaël

Raphaël Neal was born in 1980 in Orsay, France. He lives and works in the UK.

His photographic work has been exhibited and published internationally since 2005. He published several monographs, including Bates Productions (2019, Editions de l’Oeil) consisting of imaginary movie stills and De qui aurais-je crainte ? (2015, Le Bec en l’Air), co-written with French author Alice Zeniter. Through portraits and self-portraits he explores themes like solitude and seduction, boredom and imposture. His series IKWIG! (2014) depicts characters who seem to find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Windows of the World (2019) evokes the solitude experienced by characters withdrawn from the world, hiding behind their windows and screens.

In 2020, during the lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he produced a new series of self-portraits, Dark Circus, which represents characters of a strange circus troupe waiting in a state of uncertainty and loneliness in the absence of an audience. During the Summer 2020, secluded in the English countryside, he produced Discreet Peaks, an ode to nature and the body. 

In 2021, he completed New Waves, a collection of portraits of teenagers and deserted landscapes, that underlines the climat change and its contradictions. In 2022, he produced a new series of self-portraits, Hollywood Nightmares, about grief, dementia and the world of cinema.

In parallel of his photographic work, Raphaël Neal collaborates regularly with musicians of their press photos and music videos (The Divine Comedy, My Brightest Diamond, Evergreen). In 2015, he released his first long feature, Fever, adapted from the eponymous novel by Leslie Kaplan and released in France and the US, and broadcast on Arte. He is now working on his second feature, Burning cloud, a road-movie to be shot in Italy.

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