Exposure: Thadde Comar
From the streets of Paris to the frontlines of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, the French-Swiss photographer’s work captures the dreamlike, unsettling realities of protest in the age of surveillance
24/07/2026 3:38 am
“I have very clear memories of protests,” photographer Thadde Comar says of his upbringing in France. “I remember going to protest against Jean-Marie Le Pen with my family, but the most intense experience was as a college student, during the anti-CPE movement in 2006. That was my first time being alone in the streets, surrounded by the noise and the crowds.”
These formative experiences stayed with Comar and became even more potent when he found his artistic medium. “Photography was never a studio practice for me,” he explains. “My first interest in photography came from National Geographic, Life Magazine and Magnum Photographers. I always saw the job of a photographer being related to historical movements: covering wars, protests, uprisings – the stuff happening on the street.”
While studying at the prestigious ECAL school in Switzerland, Comar made regular trips back to Paris to attend protests with friends. Utilising his position as an artist rather than a photojournalist, he was free to consider alternative ways of looking at these spaces. In contrast to the pressure of direct reporting, he could take his time, digest what he was seeing and bring a level of creativity into the scene.
