“She has talent,” Internet users commented after her appearance in “Sept à Huit” this Sunday. Florent Pagny's daughter is currently promoting her first photo book, depicting her father's fight against illness over the last two years.
She is 25 years old, with long auburn hair that tumbles below her waist, and her camera always in hand. For years, the young woman has loved photographing people, life, and then her father and illness. In his first book, Pagny by Aëlwhich comes out this November 6, the French singer's daughter lays bare the latter's fight. A fight against lung cancer, which struck her in 2021. Through her photo album, neither too sad nor too happy, she captures bits of life from the last two years, captured between two concerts, during photoshoots at Mont-Saint-Michel and in Portugal, with a few sneaky smiles. Guest of the new issue of “Sept à Huit” on TF1 this Sunday, to promote her work, Aël Pagny revealed herself to the public for the first time and seems to have already won the hearts of fans. “She has talent”, “we see the education and respect”, “she is sublime and is not pretentious”, they commented in unison.
Childhood in New York
But showing off is not her strong point, she assures in front of the camera. For as long as she can remember, Aël Pagny has always preferred to observe. His first photographs date back to when he was 12 or 13, with the acquisition of his first cell phone. Born in 1999, the one who grew up in the United States then in Patagonia (Argentina) with her brother Inca and her parents, Florent Pagny and the painter Azucena Caamaño, then likes to capture nature and its dizzying landscapes, populated by all kinds of wild animals. “With my brother – who is three years older than me – we went from a school in Miami, very American-style, to an agricultural school in Argentina, where in the morning we did math, physics, history and geography. , and in the afternoon we worked the land on a farm, we collected honey and we took care of pigs and chickens,” she said in an interview with Parisian.
Faced with the immensity of things and her desire for freedom, the teenager felt, at the age of 16, a need to emancipate herself from her parents. “I understood very early on that Dad was not just Dad, that he represented something to people,” she continues. The Parisianhowever, describing a “cool”, “strict but caring” father. Like him before her, Aël decides to flee home by flying to New York, to boarding school, to study photography. Especially since her brother also left the parental home and the young woman could not see herself living without him. “My brother went to Orlando to study mechanics and I went to finish high school in New York (…) I had no idea that it had a strange effect on my parents, I realized it later.” After her time at Parsons School of Design, she stayed for a while in the big city across the Atlantic to begin her career as a freelance photographer, collaborating with brands like Post-Imperial.
Fashion beast
Perhaps it is also there, in the streets of the Big Apple, that Aël perfected his look, always very sophisticated and fashionable. On Instagram, where she is followed by some 37,000 subscribers, she appears in daring and colorful outfits: balaclavas, metallic trench coats, gothic or preppy looks. She has recently been a guest of the biggest luxury brands; Dior or Loewe during Paris Fashion Week last September. Drawing on her creativity, Aël navigates a melting pot of universes, a legacy of a childhood spent between opposing cultures. “We learned French and Spanish at the same time. My mother likes to say that we are more Argentinian than her! I couldn’t say what I like between the two cultures, I have so merged them,” she continues in “Sept à Huit”.
In Pagny by Aëlshe also asks her father to pose under Patagonian landscapes, poncho on his shoulders and smile on his lips. As she explains, the interpreter of Know how to love trusts his camera, loves his vision and his work. Other photos show him several months after his chemotherapy, in 2022, with a bald head and without his emblematic mustache. “I didn't see the sick man, I was just taking a photo of my dad. And I think that reassured him.” An intimacy sublimating in this work the daily life and bonds of the family, “very close-knit”.
