The work of Florence Paradeis has stood out in the field of French photography since the late 1980s thanks to its meticulously staging inspired by the artist’s observations of everyday life. In 1987, she worked for the photographic mission of the Délégation interministérielle à l’aménagement du territoire et à l’attractivité régionale (Datar, French interministerial delegation for town and country planning and regional attractiveness) before obtaining a postgraduate degree in fine arts in Metz. Around 1988, she inaugurated her celebrated series of view camera photographs: large format colour prints showing friends and relatives performing staged situations devoid of any particular dramatic quality – cleaning, eating or gardening in domestic settings (Détails, 1992). The artist’s snapshots are diametrically opposed to documentary photography and the myth of the defining moment in that they capture the performers in an artificial, even enigmatic manner, seemingly absorbed in the action of reinterpreting ordinary situations or the gestures of everyday life. The pictures from her family life series earned her the prize for photographers under thirty at the 4^th French Biennale of Young Photography in 1989. At first, her works were featured in exhibitions devoted to modern landscapes.

In 1994, the Villa Medici Hors les Murs Prize gave her the opportunity to visit the United States, where her work took a more cinematic turn as she focused on desert regions and suburban areas. Since 1996-1997, F. Paradeis has added video and Super 8 to her approach, in the form of short static shots edited in a loop. She took up collage in the 2000s, thus complementing her exploration of the construction of images and of our perception of them. In 2006, the Fonds régional d’art contemporain Île-de-France invited her to document the setting up of the exhibition Étranges mécaniques at the Château de Rentilly, giving F. Paradeis the opportunity to set aside her customary lengthy staging process and produce a series of reflex 24 x 36 snapshots, which were published as a volume that same year. Her works are mainly held in French public collections.