Jules and Pierre-Jacques Ober
Little Soldier Stories
Being small in a big world.
Pierre-Jacques and Jules Ober have developed an original story telling device where hobby shop figurines (‘Little Soldiers’) are photographed in miniature sets, resulting in a world where the reader will not know if one has to shrink in order to immerse oneself in the picture, or if one will have to grow into the picture in order to feel the immensity of the emotions at stake.
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Pierre-Jacques Ober
Author and modeller
Born in a military family, Pierre-Jacques Ober broke with family tradition by preferring philosophy to war. After obtaining a degree in Philosophy at Paris Sorbonne, he went to Germany to work as an assembly line metalworker before finding himself an active element of the Parisian underground music scene at the beginning of the 80s.
During the 80’s, he combined architecture studies and music production while working in fashion and advertising for leading companies such as Premiere Heure and Gedeon. He finished the 80s in a creative duo with a New York fashion photographer, co-directing commercials, short films and music videos.
In 1990, he met and married an Australian photographer and moved to the rainforest in country Australia where life and work became documentary.
In the last 25 years, he has thrown himself into numerous adventures as an independent filmmaker. From the underbelly of Sydney with a gang of outlaw bikers to the Australian central deserts with the painters of the Pintupi tribe. From rough riding with cossacks in Russia to racing wild camels in the Simpson desert.
In between adventures, he has kept working extensively with France. Producing commercials in Australia for Kenzo Perfume, directing documentaries for Universal Music Paris, setting-up French-Australian co-productions for feature films, producing and directing road-movies for networks such as ARTE, France Television or ABC TV.
Since 2015, he has applied his life-long love of history and his passion for miniatures to the telling of visual stories for children. With his wife, photographer Jules Ober, he has created numerous prize-winning books that are published internationally and used as teaching aids in schools, both in Australia and France.
Jules Ober
Photographer and designer
Jules is a photographer and designer who brings a passion for beautiful light, texture and colour to each project.
Born in Sydney, educated at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Jules Ober is a photographer who has developed a highly trained eye for images, working between Australia and Europe across platforms as diverse as fine art printmaking, fashion, film and multimedia.
As a documentary photographer her photographs have been published in magazines such as Vogue (Australia), Elle (Russia), L’Express (France), Digital Photography (Australia), Gastro (Denmark) Liberation (France), Voyeur (Virgin Airlines) and in 2017, her documentary photographs showed in 4 separate exhibitions.
In her personal work she combines the profound awareness and awe of nature imprinted on her as an Australian, with her passion for design and printmaking developed during years of living and working in Europe. Her abstract landscapes have been exhibited in Paris, Sydney and Byron Bay and have found an application in the domain of design and architecture. Jules continues to explore all the possibilities of imagemaking, from the darkroom to the latest in digital technology. She may be found working as a director of photography, multimedia producer, teaching Digital Imaging at TAFE College, cooking for her beloved family of 4, or getting lost in nature with her camera. Her current passion is to create widely loved photographic books for children.
Thanks to Felicity Coonan who was there from the early days working through many design iterations to help us arrive at our award winning book, The Good Son (Petit Soldat)!