Antoine d'Agata
Antoine d'Agata was born on 19 November 1961 in Marseille. At the age of 17, he abandoned his studies to live in the world of the night. For twelve years, he lived and travelled through some twenty countries. In 1991, while living in New York with no photographic background, he enrolled at the International Center of Photography, where he studied under Nan Goldin and Larry Clark. In 1993, he returned to France, worked as a bricklayer, and set aside his photographic practice until 1997. In 1998, his first book, Mala Noche, was published. The following year, he joined the Vu à peine gallery, founded by Christian Caujolle. In 2001, he received the Prix Niépce. In September 2003, the exhibition 1001 Nuits opened in Paris, accompanied by the publication of two books, Vortex and Insomnia. In 2004, he joined Magnum, published his fifth book, Stigma, and made his first short film, El Cielo del muerto. In 2006, he shot his second film, Aka Ana, in Tokyo, followed by his latest feature, the four-hour White Noise, which gathers together the voices of 24 women. Antoine d'Agata received the Photography Book Award at the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie d'Arles in 2013 for Anticorps, published the same year alongside a major exhibition at Le Bal, Paris.
Antoine d'Agata's work can be read as an exploration of contemporary violence from two distinct angles: the violence of the day — economic and political violence (migration, refugees, poverty, war) — and the violence of the night — the violence generated by social groups marginalised by poverty (survival through crime, addiction, sexual excess). His most recent books (now out of print) are VIRUS (2020), published by Studio Vortex, which documents the Covid-19 pandemic, and Antoine d'Agata – Francis Bacon (2020), published by The Eye, which brings together the work of both artists. MÉTHODE (2024–2025) at the Centre Pompidou took the form of a 147-day residency, an installation that structured his entire archive and encapsulated his whole artistic output, retracing the history of humanity. In 2025, he published the trilogy MÉTHODE, a visual and political testimony weaving together archival imagery and previously unpublished work to portray the contemporary world.
For the past thirty years, Antoine d'Agata has lived and photographed all over the world. To date, he has published some fifty works. Author, photographer and filmmaker, he is a member of the Magnum Photos agency, and his work is represented by Magnum Gallery, MEM Gallery in Tokyo, and Patricia Conde in Mexico. Internationally renowned, his work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, has been shown in museums around the world, and is held in public and private collections internationally.
