URBAN CAMERA: Fred Le Chevalier in Paris

I’ve always wanted to follow a Street Artist. I mean, I follow quite a lot of them with my camera. Or when they come to New York, I do my best to follow them or even meet them, as it happened to me with Mr. Brainwash, JR, Shepard Fairey and Mr. Andre only recently. I’ve always wanted to follow a Street Artist in REAL time, when he sprays, pastes, colors or glues his art on the walls.

I’ve been following Fred Le Chevalier for a few months now. I took a random picture of one of his characters in a previous visit to Paris and since then I got hooked. I started following him on his facebook page, just to realize how active he is and how the characters which he pastes on the walls of Paris (and recently Berlin) are cute and  quirky at the same time. So I was very happy when Fred agreed that I join him on one of his walks in Paris one afternoon in early June.

Here are a few facts about Fred Le Chevalier that you didn’t know:

* Le Chevalier is not his real name. It is just a nick name which means ‘The Knight’ in French

* He has a completely different day job than what people might expect of a Street Artist

* He adds poetry to his characters and glues it as a signature with his name

* He pastes his characters during the day time

* He started drawing six years ago but he has been sticking and pasting characters on the walls only for the last three years

* He started drawing bigger characters in September 2011 and since then more people are noticing and discovering him (before that he was drawing smaller characters)

* His first exhibit was in March 2012 in a cafe in Paris where he invited most of his friends

* He claims to have two different lives

* He draws new characters every day but pastes them on walls only three times a week or when he has time

* He sees a wall and decides on the spot if he likes it or not

* He has a few favorite walls to put his art on: Namely in Montmartre, and in Rue Saint Merri around Centre Pompidou

* Some characters he draws are based on people he knows (I’m still waiting to see a character with a camera)

* He sometimes tries to paste the character close to where his friends live, as a personal present

Thanks Fred for having me around!

All images are by Sivan Askayo

Read more from Sivan’s  Urban Camera column  on Untapped.  Get in touch with the author at  sivanaskayo.com  and sivanaskayoblog.com