PARIS · BANGKOK · SAINT-TROPEZ · 2004–PRESENT · CONCEPTUAL · FINE ART
Out of the Box
November 2004. A nightclub called La Suite in Paris. No studio. No agent. No plan. Just a camera and a refusal to follow anyone else's rulebook. Twenty years later, this is the archive — actors, dancers, designers, musicians, nightlife, surrealist experiments — everything that came before the series, and everything that refuses to fit inside one.
THE NIGHTCLUB BUILT THE EYE. THE ART BUILT THE ARTIST.
From a duplex in Paris to the White House. From borrowed clothes to gallery walls.
THE FIRST FIRE
À La Poupée Merveilleuse. Rue du Temple. Twenty Minutes.
The Circus was the first. The first crazy mise en scène I ever made. Not in a studio — in a costume shop called À La Poupée Merveilleuse, Rue du Temple, Paris.
Two silver umbrellas. A two-to-three hour setup with the hair and makeup team. A former ballerina who later became Miss GB. A really tall man I met in the street. An ex-girlfriend. An amazing corset designer. A supermodel. Seven people who had no reason to be in the same room — except that I put them there.
The shop was closing. We had less than twenty minutes to shoot. The chaos was real. The image was planned. That tension — between control and accident, between vision and improvisation — became the signature.
THE SHOP WAS CLOSING. THE PHOTOGRAPHER WAS JUST OPENING.
Paris, 2004. Two silver umbrellas. Less than twenty minutes. The beginning of everything.
THE STORY BEHIND
JFK Airport. One Hour in a Room. A Photograph Born from Humiliation.
Once, arriving at JFK airport in New York, I was stopped by customs. Pulled into a room. Detained for over an hour. A cap on my head, a wide smile on my face, and a look that was apparently too extravagant for the criteria.
A few months later, back in Paris, I set up a shot at the Hôtel Duo — a group of people who were different, extravagant, outside the scope of what's expected. A clown reading the International Herald Tribune next to a woman in a corset on a green sofa. Two people sharing a space that neither of them was supposed to occupy.
The image captures something we all know but rarely photograph: the conditions of acceptance, the prejudice, the unspoken requirements for belonging. You don't match the criteria. You stay out. But in this frame, they stayed in.
THEY DETAINED ME FOR MY FACE. I TURNED IT INTO A PHOTOGRAPH.
Illegal Immigrantz — Paris, 2005. Hôtel Duo. Shot with the same team as The Circus.
Illegal Immigrantz — CAZEBA, 2005 Edition: 1/1 + 1 AP: 175 × 280 cm · 3/3 + 2 AP: 100 × 160 cm · 3/3 + 1 AP: 120 × 192 cm · 1/9: 80 × 120 cm
Illegal Immigrantz — CAZEBA, 2005 Edition: 1/1 + 1 AP: 175 × 280 cm · 3/3 + 2 AP: 100 × 160 cm · 3/3 + 1 AP: 120 × 192 cm · 1/9: 80 × 120 cm
FROM THE BEDROOM TO THE WHITE HOUSE
Three Faces. One Flag. A Letter to the President.
It started with what I called First Faces Black Painted — sessions in my bedroom studio in Paris. A duplex apartment where I repainted the walls between shoots, turning the same room into a different universe every time. Available light. Body paint. An instinct that the most powerful image is the one where you can't look away.
Golden Boyz was the first version — three faces in gold and black, raw and primal. Then came Obarama Boyz: the same faces painted with the American flag.
The triptych reads right to left. The first face — closed mouth, dark expression — represents the arrival of Africans on American soil, reduced to slavery, silenced. The second face — mouth opening, paint fragmenting — represents emancipation, the voices rising within the African American community, taking part in the debate. The third face — smiling, starred — announces the victory: the election of the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama.
In 2016, before President Obama left the White House, I sent him the triptych with a letter explaining the work. The bedroom studio in Paris had found its way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
THE GOLDEN BOYZ BECAME THE OBARAMA BOYZ.THE BEDROOM BECAME THE WHITE HOUSE.
Obarama Boyz — CAZEBA, 2005. Triptych. Sent to President Obama, 2016.
Obarama Boyz — CAZEBA, 2005 Edition: 3 + 2 AP: 100 × 250 cm · 3 + 1 AP: 80 × 200 cm · 7 + 1 AP: 60 × 150 cm
THE EARLY YEARS
Place Clichy. The Champs-Élysées. EMI Records.
Between 2004 and 2006, Paris was the testing ground. Models met at La Suite or on the street. Outfits borrowed from designer press offices with more audacity than budget. Every shoot an experiment, every location improvised.
Sweet Heart — one of the first portraits, black face paint, a session that launched a career. The model became a supermodel. I ran into her years later in a Paris shop. She thanked me. I hadn't even kept her number.
The Hard Worker was pure improvisation — shot in a commercial gallery on the Champs-Élysées during renovation works. Drills, scaffolding, construction gear everywhere. I grabbed the tools, mixed them with designer Elie Kuamé's pieces, and placed model Gloria Mika in the middle of the chaos. Fashion meets construction site. No permission asked.
I also shot CHEC — a music group signed to EMI Records — capturing the raw energy of artists between takes. The same group would resurface years later as We Are I.V, signed to Warner Music in 2015.
NO BUDGET. NO ASSISTANTS. NO PERMISSION. THE CHAMPS-ÉLYSÉES WAS MY STUDIO.
Sweet Heart — CAZEBA, 2005
The Hard Worker — CAZEBA, 2005
CHEC / EMI Records — CAZEBA, 2006
THE PLAYGROUND
Q Bar. Flow Cocktail. The Surreal Beach.
Bangkok cracked the formula wide open.
At the Q Bar — David Jacobson's legendary nightlife institution — I found a playground for the kind of photography that didn't exist in Paris. The baroque interiors, the mirrored walls, the neon-drenched streets outside.
I developed conceptual photographs alongside my friends Dannie and Ben Sorum at Chanond Enterprise — Flow Cocktail, a cocktail book that was never published. But the images were real: Portrait of Angel. La Pertinence. Grand Pa's Fantaisy. High fashion meets mixology. Surrealism meets the Siamese night. Some of these images would later be licensed and distributed worldwide — their lives extending far beyond a book that never existed.
On the beaches of the Gulf of Thailand, I created what became signature images. The Chevalier Sans Cheval — a man in top hat and tails, seated on a plastic chair at the edge of the sea. Abstraction of Time — a woman in yellow on mirror-still water. The Sky, The Sea & The One — a silhouette standing against the storm. 1729 – The Dawn of Surrealism — a horseback rider found five minutes before the shot. Every element makes sense separately. Together, they make something that shouldn't exist but does.
Bangkok was also where Ogilvy Action entered the picture — leading to the S.C.A.D. charity calendar with Purina, and the HOPE Cambodia project that changed everything.
→ View S.C.A.D — Bangkok 2009
THE BRIEF SAID PRODUCT. THE ARTIST SAID SURREALISM. SURREALISM WON.
The cocktail book was never published. The photographs outlived the project by twenty years and counting.
[IMAGES with captions:]
The Chevalier Sans Cheval — CAZEBA, 2008
Abstraction of Time — CAZEBA, 2008
The Sky, The Sea & The One — CAZEBA, 2008
1729 – The Dawn of Surrealism — CAZEBA, 2008
Infinity — CAZEBA, 2008
Infinity – Le Mirage — CAZEBA, 2008
Living on the Sea — CAZEBA, 2008
Sea Odyssey — CAZEBA, 2008
Portrait of Angel — CAZEBA, 2008
Grand Pa's Fantaisy — CAZEBA, 2008
Madame Waagaard — CAZEBA, 2008
Q Bar sessions — CAZEBA, 2007–2009
The Syndrôme of Love
THE FACES
When Skin Becomes Canvas.
Running through the entire Out of the Box period is a thread of portraiture — faces that refuse to be decorative.
In Paris, between 2004 and 2006 — the Voodoo series, Voodoo Tryptik, and Golden Boyz. Body paint, available light, and an instinct that the most powerful image is the one where you can't look away.
In Bangkok, from 2007 — the experiments continued at a different scale. Dark Angel. La Pertinence. Million Dollars Kiss — a mouth encrusted with jewels, a portrait compressed into a single gesture. Serenity Aspekt — a tattooed silhouette against pure black, wild hair catching the light like a crown. Serenity Reflektion. Tear of Love — crystalline blue eyes and glitter lips on a face bleached to whiteness. The Phenix.
Each one born from the same impulse: strip away the background, strip away the context. Leave only the face and what it refuses to hide.
THE CANVAS WAS SKIN. THE GALLERY WAS THE WORLD.
[IMAGES with captions:]
Paris 2004–2006:
Voodoo — CAZEBA, 2005
Voodoo Tryptik — CAZEBA, 2005
Golden Boyz — CAZEBA, 2005
Bangkok 2007–2008:
Dark Angel — CAZEBA, 2007
La Pertinence — CAZEBA, 2008
Million Dollars Kiss — CAZEBA, 2008
Serenity Aspekt — CAZEBA, 2008
Serenity Reflektion — CAZEBA, 2008
Tear of Love — CAZEBA, 2008
The Phenix — CAZEBA, 2008
THE HOTEL
Thirty Designers. One Château. Zero Rules.
In 2011, Out of the Box reached its most ambitious form: Hôtel Particulier — a theatrical, surreal fine art series shot over six days at Château de La Grâce Dieu near Paris, with thirty designers and forty models. The Cashier. The Excentric Groom. Who the Hell Are Ya. Insomnia. Love Syndrome. Each image a three-meter-wide tableau of controlled chaos.
Several works from The Hotel are rooted in the Out of the Box DNA — the same collision between elegance and chaos, between borrowed costumes and raw instinct.
THE COMMISSIONS BUILT THE MACHINE. HÔTEL PARTICULIER WAS THE FIRST TIME I USED IT FOR MYSELF.
→ View the full Hôtel Particulier story
[IMAGES with captions — Cobra priority:]
The Cashier — CAZEBA, 2011
Who the Hell Are Ya! — CAZEBA, 2011
The Excentric Groom — CAZEBA, 2011
Insomnia — CAZEBA, 2011
Love Syndrome — CAZEBA, 2011
THE SOUND
EMI Records. Warner Music. The Artist Between Takes.
Photography and music have always fed each other in the CAZEBA universe.
In 2006, I shot CHEC — a group signed to EMI Records in Paris. Raw sessions, backstage energy, the kind of portraits that only happen when nobody's watching the camera. Almost a decade later, the same group resurfaced as We Are I.V, now signed to Warner Music. I shot them again in 2015. Different name, different label, same frequency.
Along the way — producers, performers, the entertainment world between Paris and beyond. Matthieu Tosi. Nick McKerl. Each session a collaboration between visual and sonic energy.
NO POSED SHOTS. NO PRESS KITS. JUST THE ARTIST AND THE FREQUENCY.
[IMAGES: Music sessions — CHEC 2006, We Are I.V 2015, Matthieu Tosi, Nick McKerl]
THE EDITIONS
From First Shoots to Gallery Walls.
Several Out of the Box images evolved into limited edition fine art prints — signed, numbered, and exhibited internationally at GRK Gallery Paris, Art Monaco, Miami River Art Fair, and Photo Art Asia Bangkok.
All photographs are considered fine art. Printed on museum-grade substrates: Giclée, C-Print, or Fujiflex Cibachrome. Diasec mounting available. Each piece hand-signed, numbered, and dated on verso. Certificate of authenticity included.
Produced in U.K., France, Belgium, or Netherlands by professional photo labs.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT
The Box Opened. It Never Closed.
Out of the Box is still growing. Twenty years of images that refused to follow the rules — now available as limited edition fine art prints. For galleries, curators, or collectors interested in exhibition, acquisition, or licensing.
FROM LA SUITE TO THE GALLERY WALL. TWENTY YEARS. STILL OUT OF THE BOX.
ENQUIRIES
ludo@cazeba.com — Gallery & institutional enquiries
whatzup@cazeba.com — Print shop enquiries
New collections. Drop announcements. Studio updates.