Impressionist Photography

Through reflections and heat distortion, Réhahn explores how natural phenomena transform real scenes in Vietnam into photographs shaped by light, colour and impermanence. The painterly results emerge from the scene itself, without digital filters.

Impressionist Photography emerged from a transition in Réhahn's artistic practice. Following years devoted to portraiture and cultural research, the restrictions of 2020 gave the artist an opportunity to revisit European art history. His readings on Van Gogh, Degas and Japonisme encouraged him to reconsider questions already present in his photography: the relationship between light, colour, composition and the experience of a fleeting moment.

Rather than attempting to reproduce the appearance of Impressionist paintings, Réhahn explores how photography can engage with their underlying artistic concerns. His work draws on the Impressionists' attention to changing light and atmosphere, alongside compositional principles associated with Japanese art, including asymmetry, off-centre subjects and the expressive use of empty space. These influences converge with his experience of living and working in Asia, where everyday scenes provide the starting point for a different visual language.

The photographs are created from real situations, without digital filters or artificial painting effects. Their distinctive textures and distortions emerge from natural phenomena occurring in front of the camera.

Reflections offer one way of transforming familiar landscapes into abstract compositions. Along the coast near Hội An, shallow water left by the retreating tide becomes a temporary mirror. Subtle movements across its surface fragment figures and dissolve the boundaries between sea, sky and shore. In flooded rice fields, clouds, vegetation and human silhouettes merge through reflected water. The artist also explores the salt fields where workers gathering salt appear suspended in the blue sky reflected beneath them, while white formations resemble drifting clouds. In these different environments, reflection becomes more than a visual element within the photograph. It transforms the entire composition, creating images that exist only under particular conditions of light, water and movement.

Another approach explores heat distortion during the rice harvest in the countryside surrounding Hội An. Farmers burn rice straw after the harvest, a practice that occurs during only two seasonal periods each year. This limited opportunity makes the photographs particularly dependent on timing and natural conditions. As the straw burns, waves of intensely heated air bend light and alter the appearance of objects behind them. Human figures lose their contours, colours overlap, and the landscape appears to dissolve into layers of texture. Smoke contributes to the atmosphere, but the painterly distortion comes primarily from the changing density of the heated air. The strongest effects may last only seconds, requiring the artist to anticipate the precise moment when light, heat and movement converge. Each photograph records a transformation that cannot be reproduced under exactly the same conditions.

The artist has also extended these experiments to physical materials in motion. In the Mekong Delta, coconut fibres lifted during everyday work pass through the air, creating temporary layers between the subject and the camera. Caught by natural light, the moving strands produce textures that resemble brushwork while remaining entirely part of the photographed scene.

Despite their increasing abstraction, these photographs remain connected to the people and activities they depict. Farmers, fishermen and artisans continue their work as the surrounding conditions briefly transform their appearance. The subjects are not removed from their everyday reality; instead, the photographs offer another way of perceiving it.

At the centre of this exploration is the idea of impermanence. Reflections disappear with the tide, heat dissipates, smoke clears and suspended materials return to the ground. Each photograph preserves a moment that cannot be repeated in precisely the same way.

For Réhahn, Impressionism is therefore not a fixed style to imitate, but an evolving approach to perception. His photographs explore the space between representation and abstraction, inviting viewers to consider not only what they see, but how the world changes in the act of looking.

Watch the video: Discover how Réhahn creates his Impressionist photographs using natural techniques.