Photographer and engineer Jean Lecomte illuminates living things, from marine plankton to auxiliary insects.
Jean Lecomte is a scientific photographer and CNRS engineer, whose atypical career combines scientific rigor, a passion for nature and a keen sense of transmission. Long attached to the Arago laboratory in Banyuls-sur-Mer, he took part in numerous oceanographic expeditions aboard ships such as the Charcot and the Atalante, and collaborated with several international research centers, including Woods Hole (USA) and the IRD in Nouméa. He has made over twenty scientific films for the CNRS and SFRS, helping to document marine life with precision and poetry.
As much a field photographer as a laboratory photographer, Jean Lecomte has for several years been focusing on macro-photography, in particular insects linked to biological control. Fascinated by the shapes and behaviors of these discreet species, he now devotes his visual research to the natural auxiliaries of agriculture, such as the parasitic Hymenoptera of the olive fly or the pests of the walnut tree. His aim is clear: to make the public aware of the richness of an invisible world, and to promote an ecological approach to cultivation, without recourse to pesticides.
His images, combining technical rigor and graphic beauty, are portraits of a little-known but essential biodiversity. Through them, Jean Lecomte continues his scientific mission: to see, understand and pass on.
