Jean Guichard Art Prints and Posters

The work of French photographer Jean Guichard sheds light on the mysterious world of lighthouses, their history and contemporary uses. Born in Paris on 28 April 1952, Guichard spent most of his school holidays with his grandparents in Brittany.

Guichard served in the French military in 1971 onboard a ship in the vast Arctic Ocean. During a stopover in Godthab, Greenland, the young photographer puchased his first Nikon camera to capture what he saw in the frozen wilderness. Upon returning from his service, Guichard joined the PR department of the Ministry of Industry where he was in charge of monitoring the media activity of ministers and politician figures.

In 1977 the photographer joined the Sygma agency as a photojournalist and for the next decade Jean Guichard documented numerous and diverse events, including photographing politicians, undertaking magazine reportage of conflict-torn war zones and capturing international sporting events.

In 1989, Guichard created the world-famous series of seven pictures, titled “La Jument” depicting a French lighthouse in the midst of a tempest with waves ferociously crashing and smashing against its exterior. It's not hard to see why Guichard's lighthouses are so popular, presenting a lone architectural figure, far out into the sea, being battered by the extremities of mother nature.

In 1992, Guichard published this series of images alongside other depictions of lighthouses in a book released by Editions Ouest, winning him the first prize in the illustrated book category at the Concarneau Book Fair.

Guichard lives in Paris and continues his global photojournalism to this very day.