Mathieu Rivrin
France
Bio
Mathieu Rivrin is a thirty-five-year-old professional photographer who captures the finest light along the Breton coast, from sunrise to nightfall. A storm chaser by vocation, his images of lighthouses swallowed by the waves during Storm Ruzica in February 2016 travelled around the world.
Out of those pictures — and that moment — came the desire to photograph and share these extreme weather events, and above all the ocean in fury: from the sea itself, as close to the waves as possible, from land, and from the air. The apparition of Poseidon, god of the sea, in a wave during Storm Justine, caught from Lesconil in southern Finistère, belongs to that same pursuit: the search for powerful storms and waves of raw graphic force.
He was born in Brest, and it was there, in Brittany, that his photographic adventure began in 2016. Aboard a helicopter, he flew over the Finistère coastline as Storm Ruzica raged below. From above, he watched the lighthouses take the full assault of the waves. The sea was unleashed. He captured the spectacle unfolding beneath him without knowing that, the very next day, his images would run in newspapers across the world. That moment marked the beginning of his success.
He flies over, he sails out, he sends up drones — whatever it takes to chase a storm. Poseidon would take him one step further still.