Christian Helgi is a French and Icelandic photographer, filmmaker and musician.
After studying photojournalism and African Studies at Sciences Po Paris, he worked for Arte and France 24 in Ivory Coast, and then for Are We Europe for several projects in Armenia, Moldova, Greenland, Rwanda and Kenya.
He also studied at Edim music school in Paris, and photography, music and fine arts in South Africa. He performed with the Jazz Band of the University of Stellenbosch and discovered music technology technics, that he investigated in depth at City University in London and by living in the artistic neighborhood of Hackney Wick in East London.
His visual mind grew as a child by drawing and painting bande dessinées. It taught him the sense of framing characters, storytelling, colors, texture and movements. It was therefore easy for him to embrace photography.
Helgi adopts a documentary approach to photography, focused on people. He started with street photography in Cape Town, and then worked for NGOs, theater companies, music bands, film productions.
With Are We Europe, he participated to the creation of multimedia stories in Moldova - nominated to the European Press Prize, and in Armenia, where he taught photography and film making to Armenian journalists. Helgi also filmed and recorded the AWE Live Sessions at Eurosonic Festival in the Netherlands.
In December 2021, Helgi joined the "Nordic Remix” program in Sisimiut in Greenland, produced by Are We Europe and Arctic Sound Festival, with 5 other nordic artists from Sweden, Danmark, Norway and Greenland.
With the duo Kokto, he made 10 music video clips. Helgi started to work with blues/folk singer Morjane Ténéré in 2021 with concerts all over Europe, from Greece to Norway including Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Germany... and photo & videoclips collaborations.
Helgi also works as a mountain guide-photo teacher in Iceland’s highlands and worked in the arctic as a photographer on an expedition boat, from Greenland’s East Fjords to Labrador and NewFoundland.
On the side of these projects, Helgi works as photogrpaher and director of photography for documentaries & short films. He is working on his first photobook and photography exhibition. And on his musical-visual project Ljós.
Contact : christianhelgibeaussier@gmail.com
