Jason Renaud’s first camera wasn’t anything special—just a Canon Rebel, the kind of entry-level DSLR that parents buy when their kid expresses an interest in photography but isn’t fully committed yet. “Just have fun with it,” they told him. So he did. At the time, Renaud was studying cinematography at Belmont University in Nashville, convinced that filmmaking was the path forward. He admired directors like Gaspar Noé and Wong Kar-wai, drawn to the way they used color and movement to create feeling. But the more he shot with that camera, the more he realized he liked working alone. No big sets, no waiting on people—just him, his lens, and the quiet satisfaction of getting an image exactly right.
His introduction to photography wasn’t instant; it seeped in gradually. He grew up going to the movies constantly with his parents, absorbing every frame before he even had the vocabulary to articulate why certain images stuck with him. It wasn’t until a friend handed him Juergen Teller’s Go-Sees that it clicked—this was the thing. A book full of simple, repetitive portraits, yet each one told a different story. It made him reconsider what made an image compelling. Then came Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, which hit him in a way no film ever had. It was raw, emotional, unfiltered. It showed him what photography could be beyond aesthetics—how it could capture something deeply human, flawed, and alive.
That emotional undercurrent defines Renaud’s work today. His images lean toward shadow rather than light, intimacy rather than performance. He doesn’t want his subjects to sell an emotion; he wants to capture something unspoken, something felt rather than projected. “I almost light for shadow,” he explains. “I care more about how the shadow is looking than just how the subject is lit.” He’s drawn to body language just as much as facial expressions—sometimes even more. Some of his favorite images aren’t the ones where the subject stares directly into the lens but the ones where they turn away, lost in a moment. “If you can capture an image where you just see the body language, it can be just as impactful.”
That instinct for storytelling translates seamlessly into his work in fashion. His long-running collaboration with Ann Demeulemeester started almost by chance—he first connected with the brand’s then-menswear designer, Stefano Gallici, at a Maxfield event in Los Angeles. What began as casual conversations evolved into a working relationship, and when Gallici was named creative director, he brought Renaud in as part of the team. Their partnership feels intuitive, rooted in shared aesthetics: an appreciation for black and white, a love of punk, a preference for fashion that feels lived-in rather than staged. “It was very kismet that we met when we did,” Renaud says. His photography doesn’t seek to reinvent Ann D’s legacy but instead amplifies what has always made it compelling—the quiet confidence, the romance, the defiance.
That same philosophy of capturing moments as they unfold is at the heart of Opacifier, Renaud's recently released photobook. Spanning 148 pages, the hardcover collection showcases Polaroids taken between 2021 and 2023, embracing the immediacy and unpredictability of the format. Like his inspirations, Opacifier is raw and unfiltered, favoring instinct over perfection. Renaud launched the book with immersive exhibitions, including a striking Los Angeles installation where 500 Polaroids were encased in acrylic and suspended in space. A Milan event at Antonioli followed, presented in collaboration with Ann Demeulemeester and featuring a DJ set by Nausea Twins. The book, limited to 225 copies, reinforces Renaud's commitment to photography as a physical, tactile experience rather than something confined to a screen.
That same resistance to artifice applies to how Renaud navigates the industry itself. At a time when photographers are expected to become content creators, turning their process into bite-sized social media clips, he refuses. He’s not interested in explaining his lighting setups, in making himself part of the image, in playing into the algorithm. Even Instagram’s square crop doesn’t suit his compositions, so he finds ways around it—using diptychs, playing with format, resisting the need to conform. “I don’t need to be showing my process,” he says. “The commitment to short-form video content is not something I resonate with.”
For Renaud, photography isn’t about immediacy or trend cycles. It’s about what lingers. What exists in the space between light and dark. What isn’t said, but still understood.
