Bernard Le Bars was born in 1956 in Aïn Séfra, Algeria. At age 17 he joined the Paris Fire Brigade, becoming mission chief of a fire station at 22. The following year he began photographing his colleagues, printing his images in a small lab in the station. In 1991 he was promoted to the head of the fire department’s photo/video corps, a position he held until his retirement in 1999. Between 1993 and 1998, he followed the slow and painful recovery of a severely burned fireman, published as Eric Vauthier Pompier de Paris (Editions Xavier Barral 2004). He is based in Brittany, France.