Despite a promising scientific career, Jean-Michel Berts chose a different path - to become a photographer. With his first Rolleiflex, he became sensitive to the effects of light. Since the eighties he has worked as a still life photographer for several well-known cosmetics and perfume brands. While involved in this field, he pursued a body of work with a more personal focus, called City Portrait. To achieve this unique rendering, it took him more than one year of work and research.

Jean-Michel Berts collects the essence of cities. This glance is there to remind us of the grandeur of civilizations. The abstraction of characters makes it possible to move human construction forward and thus reanimate its timelessness. From Paris to New York or Venice to Berlin and Casablanca, through his eyes these sublimated cities take a poetic, ethereal and dreamlike value. As he likes to say, "Architectural construction is the cultural reflection of a civilization."

After Venice, Paris and New York, Jean-Michel Berts continues his work on cities. For 2008, he is preparing portraits of Tokyo and Armenia.