L' ART BLESSÉ

Hady Sy was born in Beirut in 1964. His mother, a progressive Lebanese lady from

a prominent family of civil servants, and his father, the first Senegalese ambassador

to the Middle East region, succeeded in building a multicultural, open-minded family

based on their strong humanistic values that determined the essence of Sy’s being and

deeply impregnated his artistic world. Sy spent his early childhood living between Beirut, Cairo, Jeddah and Dakar.

He was only nine when he tragically lost his father, which brought the rest of the family back to Beirut, directly into the turmoil of the Lebanese Civil War. In the midst of daily

war horror and suffering, Sy finished high school and then studied Communication Arts at the Beirut University College in 1984. That same year, thanks to his French Senegalese citizenship, Sy was able to leave for Paris where he continued his studies at EFAP and joined a post-graduate programme DESS in political science at the Sorbonne.

During the mid 1980’s, Paris was constantly under various terrorist attacks and Sy felt that the political violence, conflicts and bloodshed were pursuing him. Nevertheless, he settled there and started an ambitious career in the artistic and creative fields. In 1988 he founded the International Festival of Fashion Photography (IFFP), which he guided and developed as a creative director until 1998. That outstanding project became a true trendsetter for the fashion photography of the decade, encompassing the globe by taking place in a different city every year and bringing together the biggest names of the booming fashion industry, including designers, models and photographers such as Karl Lagerfeld, Paloma Picasso, Jean Paul Gaultier, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Frederic Mitterand, Jean Paul Goude, Helmut Newton, Juergen Teller, Terry Richardson, Mario Sorenti and many more.