The Sound of Snow

Leica Gallery Paris presents The Sound of Snow, an exhibition by Catherine Henriette, on view from 28 November 2025 to 28 March 2026.

Created in Wakkanai, Japan, at the northern tip of Hokkaidō, the series reveals the austere beauty of a windswept, snow-covered shoreline. In this near-deserted landscape, the photographer captures subtle shifts of light, the hush, the emptiness—inviting us to imagine what the sound of snow might be.

Join us for the opening reception (vernissage) on Wednesday, 26 November 2025.

Learn more about her work

As she steps out of the examination room where she has just completed her master’s degree in Chinese, Catherine Henriette realizes that, in fact, she has mastered nothing at all. Somewhere between 1/125th and 1/250th of a second, she decides to go and see what’s waiting for her over there... Over there is China, and the “seven hundred million Chinese” of Dutronc’s famous song. And she, and she, and she? In the midst of a crowd not exactly sentimental but rather driven by extreme industrialization, her heart of gold is struck by silver halide, she will become a photographer. She resists, she struggles, she’s not an easy girl, she wants to remain the master of her own fate. But destiny is greater than she is. Photographer she will be. Her childlike hypersensitivity transforms into emotion. Her solitude into independence. And little by little, her immense sensitivity begins to transcend the physical. Unlike other girls, it isn’t the golden trinkets around her neck that make her pretty — it’s her black Leica that makes her beautiful. From the employment office to the Agence France-Presse, she travels the world and captures its faces for GEO, Le Figaro, and L’Express. Then, one winter morning, capturing the moment no longer feels like enough. She wants to seize time itself.
She sets down her camera as one would set an easel, and begins composing canvases where the infinitely large and the infinitely small, disorder and symmetry, permanence and evanescence, all find harmony. She becomes a painter-photographer. In 2013, the Académie des Beaux-Arts recognizes her talent by awarding her its prestigious Photography Prize. Thus she joins the Galerie Sit Down team, continuing to write, paint, and photograph her story, exhibiting in the most renowned fairs such as Paris Photo and AIPAD New York.