I am a professional photographer with an international experience based in the San Francisco Bay Area. I traveled to over 40 countries on assignment for editorial and commercial clients photographing a wide variety of subjects including wars, major disasters, world events, industrial installations, celebrities, CEOs and more.

During my career, I met and photographed a large number of famous people such as Nelson Mandela, Pope John Paul II, Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Pierre Cardin, Prince Charles of England, Princess Diana, Placido Domingo and even some dictators such as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi and Omar Bashir of Sudan.

My images have been published in thousands of magazines, newspapers, books, brochures and annual reports around the globe. My work is represented around the world by major photo agencies such as Laif , Polaris, Corbis and Getty. Some of my pictures are in the Smithsonian collections.

My career started in Paris in 1983. I was a student, majoring in Animal Biology with an interest in photography. The interest became a passion after I watched a movie, “Circle of Deceit” by German director Volker Schlondorff, about a war photographer. I was convinced that I had found his passion and a few months later, I joined a photo agency.

Two years later, after covering national news in France,I was in Lebanon covering the war as a staff photographer for Reuters News Agency. From 1985-1991, I covered all the major stories and conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and Europe. I traveled extensively, creating images that were published in most newspapers and magazine around the globe.

After seven years of covering conflicts and traveling continuously, I became interested in working from one home base. I shifted gears and decided to focus on other markets.

In 1992 I joined Sygma (the world’s largest magazine photo agency at that time) and continued to be published in international magazines. During this time,I started servicing a large clientele of advertising and corporate clients. Saatchi & Saatchi, Exxon, and General Motors were some of the accounts that came to rely on me to create images that captured the spontaneity of the moment or spoke to the essence of an individual.

In 1998, I moved to the U.S. Currently working out of San Francisco, I continue to create images for the advertising, corporate and editorial markets. My experience as a photojournalist enable me to capture the moment in the life of a factory line worker or a CEO of a major corporation.

My commitment to creating high impact imagery with lasting value has been an asset to the many companies, agencies and graphic design firms that have asked me to create visuals that tell their story.

Today, I work out of my studio in San Rafael, just outside San Francisco, and continue to travel for my clients.

Frédéric Neema