Born in 1993 in Jacmel, Haiti, Yvelt Champagne is a young photographer with a spontaneous and lively eye. After studying cookery and NGO management, which were interrupted due to a lack of resources, he gradually discovered photography through mobile phones and then honed his visual vocabulary until he turned to professional imagery at the age of 25.

Lulled by the simple poetry of the colours of Haitian sunsets, he tried his hand at model and landscape photography, all the while cultivating his affection for the Haitian people, their traditions, their colonial heritage, their superstitions and their simple, sincere joy despite the difficult odds. So he takes his camera to clubs and markets on the border with the Dominican Republic, where sharing is not always fair.

He captures moments of suspended life during Voodoo ceremonies, possessions and the soothing calm of fishermen catching their nets before the tide comes in. His portraits of his community are both uncompromising and full of empathy. His frame is secure. His photos are raw and sincere, without the trappings of technicality or aestheticism.

With a friend, he founded the ‘Perfection Image Group’ studio in Anse-à-Pitres, specialising in the production of photo and video reports, which he left to his partner when he married a Belgian woman in 2021, and finally arrived in Europe in 2023, directly in Brussels since the French embassy had refused him twice.

As well as being a Creole and French speaker, he also discovered the culture shock of the ‘old continent’ and its saturated market, full of inherited codes and ungratefulness. In 2024, he went to the Non Peut-Être gallery and came across the work of the Forget-Me-Not project, the issues of other creolities in friction with European culture.

He then decided to put together a body of photographs capable of describing his own identity, breaking with the clichés of the international press, and describing the Haitian country and its contemporary heritage with his own words, images, dreams and naivety. This is the project of the artist residency offered by the Objet Témoin foundation, the moment when intuitive work becomes a creative project.