From June 3rd to September 13th, 2026, Saint Laurent Babylone presents Daydreaming of Him, a photography exhibition by French-Australian artist Christopher Barraja, curated by Anthony Vaccarello. Hosted in the house’s Paris cultural space, the show reflects on identity, memory, and desire through Barraja’s atmospheric visual language.
Christopher Barraja and the language of intimacy
Trained at the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, Barraja first came to attention with De Chlore et de Rosé, later published by Fisheye Éditions in 2023. The series earned the Picto Prize and a finalist spot at the 37th International Festival of Fashion, Photography and Fashion Accessories in Hyères in 2022, marking his arrival on the contemporary image scene.
In Daydreaming of Him, he continues to shape a visual world marked by Mediterranean light and cultural memory. His images hover between tenderness and unease, intimacy and distance, where ordinary gestures carry emotional weight. Working through suggestion, he builds photographs that feel suspended—sensual, poetic, and deliberately unresolved.
The Mediterranean appears as both backdrop and emotional terrain, filtered through a contemporary queer lens. Desire here is fluid—never fixed, always slipping into atmosphere.
Barraja’s visual language
Barraja treats light as a material force. It molds bodies, softens outlines, and unsettles narrative certainty, turning each frame into a space open to interpretation. Memory and desire overlap, producing images that feel close yet out of reach.
His practice draws on the emotional charge of everyday moments—scenes that seem ordinary but hold quiet tension. Instead of documenting reality, he builds a visual language that sits between lived experience and imagined recall.
Photography by CHRISTOPHER BARRAJA
