Eric is a French national. His journey into fine art nudes photography began in 1990 when he moved to Germany for professional reasons. One of the first things he did was to buy a magazine called Fotoheft. He quickly found an ad from Kerstine, one of the best amateur models in the South of Germany at that time. During many shootings with her in the 90s, he learned a lot about nudes photography, especially how to engage with a model. The black and white picture in this section dates back to 2012 when they met again by chance.

During this learning-by-doing period, Eric bought many books from famous photographers, including Helmut Newton and Jeanloup Sieff. They probably influenced his work at that time. He began to consider developing his own style when working with two experienced and recognized photo artists: Arboulan in Germany and Zseni Jung in Hungary.

Eric learned high-quality fine art nude photography with Arboulan. The artist showed him the three phases for a creative picture, including the build-up phase, finding the right lighting and then taking the picture (that is already in your mind before you press the shutter button). Eric also learned discipline from Arboulan and how to work effectively in a photo studio. Today, these are still great learnings.

A couple of years after learning the basics with Arboulan, Eric decided to attend the best workshop ever on artistic nudes in July 2004 (Sebesvíz, Hungary). Until recently, he spent one week every year with both amateur and professional photographers in different Hungarian locations (Gallery) . The Hungarian artist Szeni Jung is certainly the one who has influenced him the most as she facilitated most workshops.

Eric decided to start his project VenusOnEarth after participating in a workshop in Sebesviz back in 2004: design his own Website, become a member of photo communities and work with some of the best amateur models in Europe. When looking at other websites, he was both impressed and daunted by the standards set by his peers. For a while, he felt like abandoning his project. But he didn’t. One year later, he attended the second Hungarian workshop in the Andrássy castle in Tiszadob and started to bring his creative work to the next level.

Eric’s first ambition was to get printed in the French magazine PHOTO that is organizing one of the largest contests in the world. He succeeded in January 2007 and got printed eight times since. Later, the jury of the German magazine VIEW selected many of his online pictures, including one that got printed in the paper edition.

One of the references Eric is probably most proud of is the TRIERENBERG Super Circuit whose jury selected his pictures when he participated in 2018 and 2019. Some of them got printed in the luxury edition and in a limited edition.

Last but not least, Eric organized two exhibitions, the first one in Sopot (Poland) in 2007 and the second one in 2012 in Miskolc (Hungary).

Eric’s main project during six years was a portfolio of nudes and portraits with the German amateur model Julia (Gallery). They organized 42 shootings in six years, a record unmatched since. During this longer period of time, his approach was to capture Julia’s development both as a model and as a woman. So far, this has been his most challenging project ever as it required a close collaboration with the model, lots of communication, trust and many new ideas. Eric hasn’t found such a muse since.

Eric is now contemplating on more than three decades of beauty and nudes photography . He now tries to address three challenges:

• Learn new lighting techniques
• Find new creative ideas
• Promote his work

Eric is now focusing on fewer shootings with talented models so that he can experiment new ideas. From a lighting and creative perspective, he is now being coached by Sándor Benkö, a renowned Hungarian artist and lecturer with whom he works on a regular basis. Eric’s efforts have paid off as he is getting more and more awards you can find in the References section.

The best way to describe Eric’s passion is a quote from Richard Avedon he recently read at an exhibition in Palermo, Sicily: “If a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it’s as though I’ve neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up“.