A French artist documenting weddings and families across
Puerto Vallarta, Punta Mita, Sayulita and all over Mexico since 2006.
Someone once asked me to photograph a wedding. I said yes without really thinking about it, and my world opened up: it gathered everything I already loved about art, the years I had spent painting and sculpting. I traded my brushes for a camera and went on doing exactly the same thing, bringing light into the frame.
For years I refused to call photography art. Then I finally picked one up myself, and I understood in an afternoon what I had been refusing.
I've always loved Goya. People used to compare my paintings to his: not for the subject, but for the light. It's still true of my photographs today.
"I stay invisible and let the day unfold. That's when the real emotions arrive."
I trained as an architect in Paris, and I never left that behind. It isn't separate from the artist in me, it completes him. The architect sees the lines, the volumes, where a body belongs inside a frame. The artist brings the light.
I shoot everything in manual. Never automatic. I'm always chasing the perfect angle, and there isn't a single photograph I've made without passion in it.
After twenty years and hundreds of weddings, no place feels mysterious to me anymore. But I still love arriving somewhere as if it were the first time. I don't scout a location in advance. What matters isn't knowing a place before I get there; it's staying open enough to see it fresh, every single time. Never falling into routine.
Vallarta is home, and most of my work happens on this bay. But over twenty years the job has taken me across Mexico: Los Cabos, Tulum, Playa del Carmen, San Luis Potosí, and a few more.
One of the first public same-sex weddings in Puerto Vallarta took place on the beach, in the Zona Romántica. Several couples at once, mariachis, guests arriving on horseback, the whole town watching — and I was the one photographing it. That was a long time ago. It is still one of the days I am proudest to have been asked to photograph.
Today I'm raising two beautiful daughters, and sharing my life with a woman who is the most extraordinary in the world. Every day I try to surprise her, to make her happy as if it were a brand new day. For me, love matters as much at work as it does at home.
Photojournalism is often imagined as the absence of art, the plain transcription of facts. Not in my case. I look for the angle, the reflection, the light — and when the light isn't there, I make it. I hold things in front of the lens, I place a flash where no one expects one. What I'm after is a perfect balance with a little controlled chaos in it. That's what helps me compose.
Documenting a wedding takes all of my attention. You have to split your mind between the scene and the camera: the right lens, the right settings, the focus, while watching the people and the details. It is demanding, and that is exactly why I love it.
A wedding is the story of two people and the account of one day. But above all it is a multitude of small stories laid end to end: the getting ready, the reunions, the ceremony, the journeys, everything that makes that wedding yours alone.
Something unplanned always happens. Sometimes it happens behind me and by the time I turn around it has passed. And sometimes, this comes with experience, I feel it coming and I am ready. That is where the unforgettable frames come from.
Without a scene, an image could have been made anywhere, at any time. You need to remember where it all happened, what the weather was like, to find again what you felt. So yes, I photograph the place and the details too, I know the work they cost you.
And then there is a moment that belongs to no one but the two of you, usually as the sun drops. We step away for a while. No stiff poses: just love and light, unhurried. That is the photograph you will hang on the wall.
Spots a happy tear at 100 meters. Part invisible ninja, part fine artist, always behind these lens-oculars.
If it moves, she's already filming it: vows, first dances and dance-floor chaos, all in cinema quality.
Catches every “I do”, every toast and every laugh, yes, even that one joke from your uncle.
Your love story from the sky: palm trees, ocean and the two of you, as the frigatebirds see it.
Story-telling is the art of being unnoticed, to capture true emotions.
Named by the Wedding Photographer Society in 2018, and recognized by the field's leading international institutions.
Julien's work has been published in Vogue and National Geographic, and seen on television in The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills in Punta Mita, photographing celebrities such as Lorena Ochoa, the Jack Link's family and Leslie Jordan.
