Quentin Danel’s photo exhibition with LEGO® figures in mountain landscapes is part visual prank, part love letter to the natural world.
Someone once asked photographer Quentin Danel, quite seriously, how an enormous ship had come to be moored at the Lac de Clairvaux. A reasonable question, given that the lake sits deep in the Jura mountains, far from any coast. The vessel looked weathered and heavy with history, as if it had sat there for decades. On closer inspection though, it was a LEGO® model a few centimetres long. Danel had been lying flat on the bank with a wide-angle lens, shooting at water level to make the hull loom against the horizon, and the result was, as he intended, entirely convincing.
He tells the story with evident satisfaction. It is, in miniature, exactly the effect he is after. His new exhibition Epopées miniatures, on view until 30 January 2027 at Nice’s Micro‑Folie space, turns the dramatic Jura massif into a stage for pop‑culture adventures, using nothing more than toy figurines, careful composition and a photographer’s eye for scale.
By combining nature photography with the world of miniatures, mysterious forests, waterfalls, cliffs, caves, and mountains become the settings for astonishing adventures, inspired by the cinematic universe of The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, and other fabled stories.
36-year-old Quentin Danel grew up in Picardy, the flat, northern grain country of France, quite the opposite of a mountain landscape. He arrived in the Jura around 2020, and the region did to him what it tends to do to people who pay attention: it overwhelmed him. The four seasons are extreme, dramatic, and theatrical there. Waterfalls run hard. Lakes shimmer in an unlikely turquoise. And the limestone plateaux feel, on certain winter mornings, like the edge of the earth.
Quentin Danel had already been working as a freelance photographer for several years, with sports and events as the general scope of an independent career. But the vast, still Jura landscape demanded a different approach. It needed a subject, something that could contextualize those spaces with a story without crowding them out. In time, he found what worked: tiny toys.
But he is emphatic that the toy is a means, not the point. The figurines simply give his work its particular voice. “In photography, I work with a subject,” he explains. “It can be a tree, or a human being… and the LEGO® fills that role, giving the image its dynamic.”
The characters he chooses are drawn from the collective imagination: Gandalf the White standing before a Jura gorge; a T-Rex at the edge of a mountain lake; Imperial stormtroopers on a snowfield; Frodo and Sam crossing a scree slope. Danel understands that a LEGO® figure already carries cultural weight, and that deploying a character everyone recognises instantly multiplies the effect. Young children see a dinosaur in a wild place and believe it, briefly. Adults see it and remember having believed things. Both responses are, as far as Danel is concerned, perfectly valid.
Danel’s photographs are composed with the seriousness of someone who has waited, sometimes for days, for the right weather, the right hour, the right quality of light filtering through a waterfall. He shoots from ground level or from the surface of the water, angling upward to make a figure two centimetres tall read as monumental. He avoids grass, loose stones, or anything that might break the illusion of scale. His only occasional concession is a small air bomb for atmospheric haze. The result is photographs that are, for a fraction of a second, inexplicable… then, when the penny drops, genuinely funny, and finally, oddly moving.
A photograph succeeds if it doesn’t leave anyone indifferent. It can be laughter, a smile, desire, nostalgia. The important thing is to create an emotion.’
— Quentin Danel
Danel’s work already has a devoted following. A calendar compiling his images sold out before it even reached the Christmas markets. His long-term ambition is a book, a portrait of the Jura region seen through the specific lens of plastic and imagination. Épopées miniatures is a significant step toward a promising artistic career with its own signature.
The Tiny Epics also come with a live dimension. During the Toussaint school holidays from mid October on, Danel will be in residence at the Micro-Folie, developing new work and opening the process to visitors. Workshops for children and adults will cover the basics of photography – composition, framing, and light – as well as the specific pleasures and puzzles of staging a miniature world against an enormous one.
For a Riviera audience accustomed to curated views and high‑gloss imagery, Danel’s work proposes a different kind of spectacle: one that is inexpensive, imaginative and rooted in the physical reality of landscape. His images suggest that the most dramatic sets are already there in the folds of a hill, the edge of a cliff, or the shadow of a pine, and that all that is needed is a shift in viewpoint and a willingness to play. Epopées miniatures is a reminder that even alongside digital effects and algorithmic feeds there is still room for a photographer who takes pride in building his visual world by hand and craft.
Follow the artist’s work: @quentin.danel.photographe on Instagram.
VISITOR INFORMATION
Épopées miniatures – Quentin Danel
Until 30 January 2027
Micro-Folie départementale, Nice
Open Tuesday through Saturday 10 am – 6 pm | Free admission
Toussaint residency and public workshops: during the school holiday period; dates to be confirmed with the venue.
VENUE DETAILS
Micro-Folie Départementale des Alpes-Martimes 06
26 rue Saint-François de Paule
06300 Nice
Tel: +33 (0)4 89 04 56 90
PHOTO CREDITS
- All images courtesy Départemente des Alpes Maritimes and © Quentin Danel
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