Denis Dailleux was born in 1958 in Angers, France. He has published a series of photography books, portraying Egypt, Cairo, his impressions of the revolution, and Ghana. His photographs have been exhibited internationally in Paris, Marrakech, Accra, and across the world.
Dailleux has been awarded several international prizes, including the Monographies Award in 1997, the World Press Photo Award in the portraits category in 2000, the Hasselblad of the town Vevey Award in Switzerland in 2000, the Fujifilm Award of Festival Terre d'Images to Biarritz in 2001, and the World Press Photo Award 2014 in the staged portraits category (2nd). He is a member of Agence VU and currently lives in Paris.
„Imbued with his distinctive delicacy, Denis Dailleux’s photographic work appears calm on the surface, yet is incredibly demanding, run through by an undercurrent of constant self-doubt and propelled by the essential personal bond he develops with those (and that which) he frames with his camera.
His passion for people has naturally led him to develop portraiture as his preferred means of representing those whose true self he feels an urge to get closer to. Which he has, with actress Catherine Deneuve as well as with countless anonymous subjects from the slums of Cairo, working with the same discretion, waiting to get from his subjects what he is hoping they will offer him, without ever asking for it, simply hoping that it will happen.
That is how he has patiently constructed a unique portrait of his beloved Cairo to create, with black and whites of exemplary classicism and colors of rare subtlety, the definite alternative to the heaps of cultural and touristic clichés which clutter our minds.“
Christian Caujolle, Founder and Director of Agence VU