Biography :
In 1977, Louise Maisons discovered both punk rock and photography. During a one week workshop she took in her hands for the first time an old Pentax camera without light meter that forced her to learn to evaluate the light by sight. This, combined with her imoderate love for classic photography, determined her taste for old photographic material against modern technology...
Five years later, in 1982, Louise Maisons became a professionnal photographer by mixing her two passions : rock and photography. Until 1986 she got involved in the international alternative rock scene by doing pictures and also by creating an alternative magazine "Noir Marine" available in France and England .
Early in 1986, Louise Maisons bought an ancient 6X6 camera and started a portrait studio work that was exhibited that same year for the first time both in Paris and Amsterdam. From then on, exhibiting in galeries has taken most of her time, showing and selling her pictures in France and foreign countries. In 1994, an outdoor pictorialist portrait serie has been exhibited, adding a new style to her work until then only dedicated to studio portraits.
The following years Louise Maisons explored a new studio theme, working on body pieces ("Fragments") and specially the hands. This study, started with the 6X6 camera was to be also continued with a 4X5 camera.
Buying this folding camera has been quite an event. Although nothing would make her part with her beloved 6X6 camera, the 4X5 gave Louise Maisons a chance to do her first prints with alternative processes such as cyanotypes and palladium. These techniques from the begining of photography (XIXth century) using chemical salts on art paper represents a way to expand further on her taste for an artisanal way of working in photography.
Louise Maisons, is still doing portraits and still works on "Fragments" pictures while spending most of her time doing still life and garden pictures, such as "Le potager du Roi". These new series are black and white analog pictures for Louise Maisons never developped any interest in digital photography. More than anything she loves films and spending time in a darkroom ...
Since 2006, Louise Maisons also teaches photography, giving lessons and workshops.
Louise Maisons lives and works in Paris.