Estelle Hanania

Estelle Hanania is a French photographer who studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, graduating in 2006. She won the Grand Prix at the Hyères Photography Festival that same year. Having explored for many years the challenges of bodily transformation through her photographs of subjects engaged in theatricality, staging and cross-dressing, Estelle Hanania is now applying the notion of metamorphosis to her own image production. She has developed a series of photographic totems, born from a desire to regain control of her artistic material and the need to give her stories a physical form.

She regularly exhibits in both group and solo shows. Since 2009, her work has been the subject of various publications including Dondoro (Kaugummi, 2011), Glacial Jubilé (Shelter Press, 2013) and Happy Purim (Shelter Press, 2017) to name a few. These publications attest to her many creative encounters and partnerships. Her long-standing collaboration with the choreographer Gisèle Vienne, which began in 2009, has resulted in two books: It’s Alive! Through the Work of Gisèle Vienne (Shelter Press, 2019) and This Causes Consciousness to Fracture (Spector Books, 2024).

In 2023, Estelle Hanania founded her own publishing house, Myriorama, which released its first title in 2025.