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And I shall veil you, Youth, with all the Melancholia that devours me

A conversation with Jason Renaud

Initially drawn to moving images before shifting to still ones, Jason Renaud crafts photographs imbued with a cinematic sensibility, an echo of his enduring passion for film. His work sits at the centre of a love triangle, with music and fashion forming the other two angles. Known for gritty contrasts and grainy textures, his lens captures the raw energy and inner turmoil of today’s underground youth. In this interview, we delve into his process, exploring his layered compositions reminiscent of long exposures, his collaboration with Belgian-born brand Ann Demeulemeester and the experimental techniques he’s currently exploring.

I feel attached to the images you create, as if they were mine. There is a palpable sentimentality rendered through the material quality of the grainy texture you adopt—as though those imperfections were giving weight, a sense of grounding, to otherwise ghostly figures. What made you fall in love with photography? Was it the urgency to capture the ungraspable?

I fell in love with photography through my love of film actually – I grew up watching films my entire life. Going to movies, watching them at home, I was already attracted to the visual arts from a young age. But from there, as I continued schooling and gradually shooting stills on the side, I found that there was a unique challenge in evoking something from a single still. I distinctly remember first seeing Nan Goldin’s “Ballad of Sexual Dependency” and realising oh wow, ok this is what a still image can do. From there I wanted to explore more.

What do you ultimately want to deliver through your images? Is there something you are still trying to capture: something elusive, not a subject, but a sensation or presence?

That’s a great question – and I’m not sure I have the answer. A lot of the style of my work and subjects I capture, while yes they do pay homage to some references I particularly love, I don’t consciously set out to deliver a certain feeling or emotion. I think that is ultimately up to the viewer, how they step back and view the work as a whole and individually – sometimes I am too inside the box to see the entire thing.

“There’s something super interesting about a lingering sense of melancholy in youth”

Stella Rose Gahan
Rose Dusser
Puma Rose

There is a veil of indefinite intimacy in the images you produce. Do you consider the photographic lens a privileged view, an access point to the inner soul of your subjects? What has been the most intimate moment you’ve ever experienced while photographing?

Absolutely – especially with talents I shoot again and again, it’s a privilege when a talent truly lets me capture them as themselves wholly. And that can look like a lot of different things, at home, on location, right before a big performance or show. But I usually can feel or tell when it happens, and those are among my favorite shots. I think people can conflate nudity with intimacy and I find it’s not always the case – yes that can be an intimate moment built on trust, but some of my most intimate shots are facial expressions or poses when the model is caught off guard, fully clothed, but there’s an unspoken comfortability that allows a subject to express themselves more fully. The most intimate moment I’ve ever experienced shooting I don’t think I’ve shot yet – but I think some of my favourites are immediate before or after a runway show – you can see the designer, the models, enter into a different headspace – whether that’s fear or excitement or nervousness, if you can get them quite literally before or as the show starts, or immediately when it ends, that’s a special shot. So many emotions are projected onto their face and they all pass so quickly.

On this note, how collaborative do you believe the photographic act truly is? It seems like there’s a silent joint effort between you and the subject, almost a shared authorship.

The best photos are when it’s collaborative – I have seen so many sets fall apart or not have an idea fully realised when a director or brand tries to force a model into a vision that just doesn’t connect. That’s not to say models can’t act the part, for most commercial jobs it is about executing a singular vision. But there has to be some give and take between you and the talent – some of the best ideas and shots come from the talent. Who else knows their body and how they look better than the talent themselves? It should be a conversation, and that’s how you get the best results. And I find over time, the collaboration becomes almost second nature because you’ve had this understanding of creative and working together time and time again, and when it becomes unspoken like that you can get something really special.

Overlapping images, almost reminiscent of long exposures, unlock a sense of memory, blurring together static and dynamic dimensions. Do you perceive photography as something frozen in time, or as an evolving, living image?

I think it depends on the type of photo – a lot more candid moments will live forever in that moment, a shot off hand or unexpected. But as a body of work, whether with one subject or one brand or one idea, I think it constantly grows and shifts, because you continue to develop, expand your vocabulary of your body of work and your craft, and that informs how the whole looks.

“There’s something super interesting about a lingering sense of melancholy in youth”

Zoe / mistycarrots
Ilona – Zoe / mistycarrots
Zoe Bleu Arquette

You portray youth, yet I can’t help but detect a sense of decay, a remembrance of caducity, lingering in your frames. Is death present in your work?

There’s something super interesting about a lingering sense of melancholy in youth – you learn so young to fear death or as this nameless entity that you don’t quite understand, but it’s always there. It’s something I don’t fully understand but I’ve always been drawn to that idea, and how it presents itself in the medium – kids that grew up too fast, youth that wants to be taken seriously or perceived a certain way, youth growing older.

The brand Ann Demeulemeester, in particular, seems to have fully embraced your vision, entrusting your lens for multiple campaigns and special projects. Could you share more about this relationship? And while we’re on this: what is your connection to youth itself, especially since you live in LA? In which way youth subcultures play into your narrative?

Absolutely – Stefano and I met by chance in LA, at an event for Ann Demeulemeester that I was shooting for Maxfields LA. It began as a friendship, and organically as morphed into a really special creative process together. I don’t think we’ve ever had a disagreement creatively, there is an intrinsic and unspoken understanding of each other’s tastes, and I think that really informs how the photos turn out and how they’re presented. I think Stefano and I both are drawn to rising artists, where it is purely about the talent and their raw skill and their excitement at the precipice of greater things. It’s a special time to capture an artist and some of those artists’ best shots (ex. Kate Moss), lie in their early, unfiltered work.

I sense you’re deeply informed by a particular musical atmosphere, something that brings to mind Hedi Slimane’s photographic sensitivity. Even when documenting music-related events, the fashion eye is never absent. How do you navigate this love triangle between music, fashion, and photography?

They all inform each other – musicians will usually have a sense of style, or at least an idea of it. Fashion is tied to music – a stage presence, a score for a runway show, a custom, unique signature look. And all of it has to be documented, archived, preserved in some way.

“…all of it has to be documented, archived, preserved in some way.”

As romantic as your images are, there’s always an aftertaste of edge, as though, through those evanescent grainy shots, one could almost taste the rust of time. Which visual references help you access that darkness?

Honestly a lot of film – film, especially some darker pieces of work (Von Trier, Fincher, Haeneke), really use lighting or lack thereof to inform the feeling. Film is all lit continuously – so rather than having this beautiful, super flattering strobe lighting you get this harder, grittier contrast. So I’ve always pulled more from that than conventional studio style photo shoots.

I’ve noticed you’ve also experimented with scans. How did you get into that kind of post-production work, and what techniques are you currently exploring?

I just got bored – and I don’t like to be bored or feel stagnant in my own work. So I’m constantly trying to see what can I do within my own work to make me look at it differently – like even cutting polaroids in half for the last Ann Demeulemeester season, I felt like I wanted to branch out of polaroid and see how I can distort the format. Currently less of a technique but more of what I’m working on, a special single subject book. How can I capture the same subject, as parts of a whole, and convey both who they are but also make it dynamic and compositionally very strong.

If you could trace the future coordinates of your style predicting the arc of your career, what unexpected directions do you think your work might take?

Since the world of film was the first craft I really fell for, I’d love to see where that goes down the road, whether it’s directing more fashion films or aiming higher for a feature. I’d like the challenge of translating my “style” into something beyond stills down the road.

Ann Demeulemeester SS25 Backstage
Jakob Hetzer in NYC for Ann Demeulemeester FW24 Campaign
Rylee Stumpf
Devon Ross

And I shall veil you, Youth, with all the Melancholia that devours me / Jason Renaud

Credits
Photographer: Jason Renaud / @jasonrenaud
Words: Giulia Piceni / @giuliaapiceni
Editor: Maria Abramenko /@mariabramenko 
Junior Editor: Annalisa Fabbrucci / @annalisa_fabbrucci

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