I met Nicolas Doucet in Paris, and I remember that feeling well. Sometimes you meet someone, and you immediately recognise a similar kind of fire. Not the same path, not the same images, but the same real passion. With him, it was there from the beginning.
Later, I saw him again in Brussels, a city that somehow feels like a second home to many of us, and again at Baxton Gallery, through our mutual friend Marjolaine Vuarnesson. Seeing him there only confirmed what I had already felt. Nicolas carries photography in a very honest way. No noise around it. No need to overplay anything. Just a deep connection with the medium and a very clear personal pulse.
Nicolas is self-taught, originally linked to the Polaroid Clermont Ferrand collective in France, and now based in Brussels. He calls himself a street photographer, and that says a lot. His work comes from the street, but not in a documentary sense alone. There is something more open in it, more unstable, sometimes almost like a parallel reality slipping into the frame.
He has been working only with Polaroid for more than ten years, and you can feel that long relationship in the images. He knows what the medium gives, and also what it takes away. The imperfections are not hidden. The fragility is part of the image. The surprise, too.
What I like in Nicolas’s work is that it feels personal without closing itself. His photographs suggest more than they explain. They move quietly, but they stay with you. There is risk in them, and also tenderness. A way of looking that is not afraid of the strange, the intimate, or the unexpected.
He is also a collector of Polaroid cameras, and that part matters because it speaks about his bond with the object itself. Not only the image, but the camera, the gesture, the exchange that happens around instant photography. For Nicolas, Polaroid is not just a tool. It is a way of meeting people, of creating connection, of turning a moment into something shared.
That is probably why his work leaves such a clear impression. There is no forced attitude in it. No need to shout. His images have their own silence, but it is a strong one.
Nicolas is one of those photographers who remind us that instant photography is still a living language, full of instinct, friendship, and possibility. And that, for those of us who care deeply about this world, is something very beautiful to witness.