Carine Magescas

Carine Magescas is a French photographer who moved to the US in 1998. After 15 years in California, she now works and lives New York City. Her photography was first discovered after she and a friend from France launched 2Filles2Villes.com in 2010, a collaborative photo blog featuring a weekly photo diptych, a dialogue in pictures between 2 friends in 2 different countries. Since then, Magescas’ work has been exhibited in New York, London, San Francisco, Nantucket, Greenwich and the Hamptons and her photographs hang in homes and private collections from Asia to Europe.

Carine Magescas’ dexterity for sophisticated minimalism can be experienced within a single frame. Through delicate overexposure, Magescas captures a luminous haven of subdued serenity and minimal seascapes with a timeless quality. “I bring back contrast and exposure to the images I shoot in over-exposure,” says Magescas. Peaceful and sophisticated, these familiar beach scenes speak universally as their beauty evokes a sense of calm and purity. “I find America extremely inspiring. The sheer scale of landscape is so powerful here.” The vast expanses of shoreline and beach in Carine’s images, rid of all seasonal furor, paired with her ability to strip the images down to just the perfect level to create her vision, brings a spontaneous sense of serenity.

Magescas has always had a fondness for deserted beaches, once the crowds have left, for they bring back memories of the beaches of her native France’s West Coast and the slight melancholy of the last days of summer. Carine is particularly drawn to composition with multiple layers, capturing a sense of abstraction. With these scenes of white and muted hues of the ocean, she encourages us to ponder, and take a moment to contemplate life, much perhaps like her subjects while they’re floating in the water waiting for the next wave.