Réhahn by Sylvain Ledda

A biography in images of French artist Réhahn by Sylvain Ledda, professor at the University of Rouen Normandy. Through 74 photographs, the book explores twenty years of work, from portraiture and cultural research to Impressionist photography.

Réhahn is a biography in images written by Sylvain Ledda and devoted to twenty years of work by French fine-art photographer Réhahn. Scheduled for publication on 12 November 2026 by Éditions Hermann in Paris, the French-language hardcover brings together 74 photographs and a text that follows the artist's evolution through encounters, literature and changing ideas of what photography can express.

Rather than organizing the work as a conventional chronological retrospective, Ledda uses six thematic sections: Crossing, Contemplating, Feeling, Seeing, Sharing and Legacy. These headings allow images from different periods to enter into conversation. Réhahn's childhood in Normandy, his life in Hội An, relationships formed through portraiture and his long-term cultural research in Vietnam are considered alongside the visual questions that have occupied his later work.

Ledda is Professor of French Literature and Arts at the University of Rouen Normandy, known for his scholarship on Romanticism, Alfred de Musset and Alexandre Dumas. His exchanges with Réhahn began in 2024 through their shared interest in Musset and expanded into conversations about the relationship between literature, memory, artistic practice and the visual image. The book reflects this interpretive perspective rather than presenting itself as a photographic catalogue.

The selection traces a development from Hidden Smile and Ageless Beauty to the artist's engagement with Vietnam's 54 ethnic groups and the creation of the Precious Heritage Museum in 2017. It also follows the gradual widening of his attention toward crafts, natural materials, rice fields, reflections and changing light. These experiences contributed to his more recent Impressionist photography, in which the conditions of a scene, such as movement across water or the bending of light through heated air, produce painterly effects at the moment of exposure, without digital manipulation.

Across these different periods, Ledda identifies continuities in Réhahn's attention to people, the passage of time and the fragile nature of moments. Instead of treating portraiture, cultural research and Impressionist photography as separate activities, the book examines how each phase shaped the next, offering a reading of the artist's changing visual language and the ideas underlying it.

The French hardcover edition is scheduled for publication by Éditions Hermann on 12 November 2026, with 192 pages and 74 photographs. A separate English-language edition, translated by Molly Headley and published in Vietnam, has a worldwide release scheduled for November 2026. This edition contains 154 pages and 75 photographs and is available as a signed hardcover through the artist's official website.