Christian Février

Christian Février is a photographer and sailor historian, born in 1938 in Dinan in France. Passionate about the rise of multihulls, he has contributed to the magazine Voiles et Voiliers since its creation in April 1971.

He grew up in Rabat, Morocco. His passion for sailing was sparked when he met Joël and Yves Le Marrec at school, who built their first sports catamaran in 1954. The trio presented the Véloce in 1958 at the Paris Boat Show, and 170 copies of the boat were subsequently built.

At the end of 1957, Christian Février left Morocco to enrol at the Académie Charpentier in Paris. He also prepared for the entrance exam to art schools. Interested in graphic design, he enrolled at the École Supérieure des Arts Modernes. It was also in 1957 that he met Pierre Marchand, an apprentice typographer, who later became, along with Jean-Olivier Héron, the founder of Gallimard Jeunesse and Voiles et Voiliers in 1971. Pierre Marchand's passion for typography and layout influenced Christian Février.

In 1956, Le Yacht (France's oldest sailing magazine) published a photograph of Christian Février for the first time. He was 18 years old. In 1962, Christian Février joined the Edip advertising agency in Paris as a graphic designer. Two years later, he set up his own business and discovered ocean racing with André Viant. In 1967, on Esprit de Rueil, they won all the Royal Ocean Racing Club races as a crew. It was during this period that Christian Février bought a second-hand Zorki (a Russian copy of the Leica) and began photographing races. Among his sources of inspiration, Keith Beken, the great photographer from Cowes, obviously holds a special place. But his primary reference remained the Frenchman Erwan Quéméré. He spent his entire career using film cameras. To frame his images as tightly as possible, Christian Février used powerful telephoto lenses such as the 300/2.8, 500/4 and 600/4.

In 1978, he joined Daniel Allisy, who had just founded his marine photography agency Sea & See. In the early 2000s, he worked as an advisor and photographer for Karren May on the creation of the international photography agencyBluegreen Pictures, specialising in marine and nature photography.