Born in France in 1972, Richard Pak is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice combines documentary photography, visual research and the convocation of narrative and video.
For several years now, he has been conducting an artistic research project on insularity. The first chapter of this cycle (Les îles du désir) takes us to Tristan da Cunha, in the South Atlantic (series La Firme, 2016-2017). The second opus, L'archipel du troisième sexe (2022), focuses on the Mahu transgenders and the RaeRae of Polynesia, who have been transgressing the biological gender boundary for centuries. The third part, L'île naufragée (2022/2023), tells the tragic story of the Oceania island of Nauru, which has gone from being the richest country in the world to one of the poorest in less than twenty years. His story could be literary fiction, where delusions of grandeur and greed have transformed a paradise island into an ecological, economic and social disaster.
Richard Pak's work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions in France and Europe. He has published two monographs with Editions Filigranes, and his photographs are included in public and private collections, including those of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Galerie Le Château d'Eau in Toulouse and the Neuflize OBC Collection.