About Me

In short

I fell in love with photography in 2022 and bought my first camera. In 2023, I registered as an artist photographer in France under the artist-author status. In 2024, I received a grant from the Paris City Hall to get an interchangeable lens camera and I published my first art book—The Real Paris: Diary N°1. In 2025, I launched the first series of my Art Postcards with three compositions.

Who am I?

MESAGI (pronounced ME-SA-JI) is the combination of my first and last name. I am an introverted but sensitive and emotionally driven man. Other than going out with my camera, I love spinning a CD to dream with music, diving into a good movie to feel different emotions, pouring a libation, and lighting a cigar to burn my stress.

Born in 1984, I have been a Parisian for decades. I have tried many things in my life—from being a trader to leading a team in renovation works—without finding success or satisfaction. I am a dreamer, not a realist. This may explain why I jumped into photography without hesitation although it is well-known that artists are starving…

How I met photography

Summer of 2022. I am in my late 30s, broke and lost after years of failures and depression. I have been trying to get a part-time job for months. In vain. You can imagine how being rejected for cheap part-time jobs—like pedestrian crossing supervisor and grocery bags carrier—affected me. 

It is frightening to look at your future to see nothingness. It was during those days lost to the night of the heart that I met photography through the art of Daido Moriyama. A single photograph of him made me immediately fall in love with black-and-white photography! After the purchase of my first camera—a simple Ricoh GR III—there was no doubt in my mind: I had found my calling. In photography, I had found something to hang on to: a therapy for my malaise in this absurd world.

The real Paris: Diary N°1, my first art creation

After a few months of practice in the streets of Paris, I started going out with my camera for my first art creation. Being a Parisian since my childhood, I could not miss the contrast between the Paris I see every day and the Paris in the media which is unrealistically glamour. Born was the desire to show the Paris that I and other Parisians are seeing. This desire gave life to my first art book The real Paris: Diary N°1.

Pouring all of my being into my photography

While working on the creation of my first book another desire had slowly taken form in my heart and will obsess me for a relatively long time: having a personal vision of what my photography should be. Ensued a deep introspection, lots of torments, and thinking and rethinking until I finally realized that my aspiration was neither technical nor aesthetic. My deepest aspiration was simply romantic and I just wanted to pour all of my being into my photography to make it my own.

Influences

My main influence is Daido Moriyama, he’s the one who made me fall in love with photography. I’m particularly a fan of his compilation book Record published in France. Black-and-white movies always made a big impression on me. To cite a few: In The Soup (1992) by Alexandre Rockwell, Le Feu Follet (1963) by Louis Malle, The Stranger (1946) by Orson Welles, Following (1998) by Christopher Nolan…

Music is also an important part of my life and has the power to catalyze or alter my mood. I listen to all kinds of music throughout the day (and evening): 90’s American and Japanese rap (2Pac, King Giddra), jazz (Dexter Gordon, Miles Davis), bossa nova (Alaide Costa, Stan Getz), French variety (Gainsbourg), shoegaze (Slowdive, Lush), electronic (Autechre, Klaus Schulze), 80’s Japanese pop (Rebecca, Momoko Kikuchi), classical music (Rachmaninoff’s symphony N°2, Strauss’s Lieder), Opera (Puccini, Strauss’s Elektra), salsa (Héctor Lavoe), etc..