This adopted Périgourdine has photographed the biggest rock stars across the planet

Un day, Carole Epinette’s dad gave her a Polaroid. “I had a lot of fun with it,” smiles the adopted Périgourdine. She was then 6 years old and lived in the Paris region. Photography will never let her go, even if she first considered becoming a children’s judge, before being put off by the kilos of texts to swallow.

Once she left law school, she took a job supporting herself while training in photography and reading books: “I didn’t have the money to go to school. I tested things and wrote down the settings in a notebook. »

A rock fan, she goes to concerts hiding her photo equipment, taped under her clothes. It must be said that we were less thorough at the time. “When I felt that I had enough good photos, I knocked on the door of a specialist magazine. » “Hard’n Heavy” loves his work and publishes his first photos. She is 22 years old. Then “Best” calls him. And so on, from “Rock and folk” to Anglo-Saxon magazines, including “Le Monde” and “Libération”.

Impressive playlist

For around twenty years, Carole Epinette lived between two planes to photograph rock stars around the world, between concerts and studios. His customers? Magazines, record labels and artist managers.

The Cure, AC/DC, Iggy Pop, Iron Maiden, Alain Bashung, Étienne Daho, Indochine, Marilyn Manson, Amy Whinehouse, Ben Harper, Metallica, James Brown, Coldplay, Pete Doherty, Arthur H, Motörhead, Eagles of Death Metal, Depeche Mode. La playlist est impressionnante.

But it has some shortcomings. At the forefront of those she regrets not having immortalized, without hesitation, Carole Epinette cites Kurt Cobain, who died in 1994. Tom Waits is also missing from her archives: “He has a mouth. I have a feeling it would have made great images. »

When she accompanies a tour, she shares hotels, the bus, the canteen with the artists.

One that combines light, an attitude and an emotion in an instant. “In concert, I waited a lot to capture that moment, which actually didn’t always happen. I sometimes came home empty-handed. » We learn from her that lighting that is too red or too blue erases facial features. “In the studio at least, it’s me who creates the light. »

“Complicated” moments

When she accompanies a tour, she shares hotels, the bus, the canteen with the artists. “I experienced beautiful moments, sometimes touching their sensitivity, even their extreme solitude. » But there were also “complicated” days in a very masculine environment, sometimes with “heavyweights”.

“I had to protect myself, to always be straight in my sneakers and balanced, including so as not to fall into drugs or alcohol in contact with these night owls. Fortunately I have character, wit and humor! »

At the height of her career, in the 1990s and 2000s, Carole Epinette recharged her batteries by taking refuge in the great outdoors for four weeks every six months, in a Costa Rican forest or an African desert.

A few years ago, the one who has paternal ties to the Basque Country took a step back: “Conditions have changed. Less time with the artists, more imposed things. My creativity was less nourished. »

Responding to “the call of the heart”, she settled in Dordogne in 2012, first in Sainte-Mondane then in Montignacois, not too far from the Dhagpo Kagyu Ling Buddhist center. “As a teenager, I campaigned for Tibet,” she says with a smile, sitting in her garden which opens onto the forest.

Workshops to transmit

In recent times, she has trained in various therapy techniques, including hypnosis. But photography still keeps him busy, between exhibitions, books (1) and photoshoots for local musicians or individuals: “I don’t care if people are famous. My desire is to meet humans, to create an image in line with what people want to show of themselves. »

Eager to transmit, she is preparing a series of photo workshops for 2025, with a little technique and a lot of advice and experimentation, to help people “set their eyes”. It will be somewhere near her home (2): “The worse things go, the less I want to move,” smiles the now fifty-year-old, caressing one of her four cats.

(1) “Rock Fictions” (Cherche Midi, 2018), which compares his photos and texts written for the occasion by authors such as Amélie Nothomb, Bernard Minier, Thomas VDB… And also “When the Earth speaks to us. Messages from the sacred places of the Vézère valley” (self-publishing, 2020), with texts by Marie-Christine Girard.

(2) Contact : [email protected].