Snow falls at night. A little girl, barely dressed, huddles on a sidewalk, selling matches, but she lights them to try to keep warm, while those tiny sparks flutter around her like fireflies.

It is the beauty of fragility, of vulnerability on the verge of breaking or of becoming stronger.

It is the beauty of the margins, which are not usually seen, recognized, or accepted, and which expose inhumanity, incomprehension, or indifference.

It is an invitation to look beyond appearances with a critical or denunciatory reflection that breaks the mold and opens up a spectrum of plurality and diversity.

This is what pulsates in the drawings of Benjamin Lacombe (43 years old / Paris, 1982), one of the most relevant and popular literary illustrators of the 21st century. Twenty-five years ago, he began to solidify his artistic and transgressive universe when, at the age of 19, he entered the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (ENSAD) in Paris in 2001 and published his first graphic novel. He has since produced some forty books for young adults and adults, illustrated and self-published, translated into twenty languages, with millions of copies sold.

His work stages and reinterprets the “traditional or normal” world in a conjunction of delicacy, tragedy, nostalgia, fear, illusion, vindication, and vulnerability, featuring characters of “strange” beauty in a fragile equilibrium where one of these characteristics is on the verge of overflowing or breaking.

“I have a certain fondness for the geeky, the strange. They never frightened me as a child. On the contrary, I saw a kind of beauty there. Peculiar characters who had a certain presence”, Benjamin Lacombe recalled in an interview in Madrid in December 2025.

The French artist has just published three books for all ages, presented as collectible objects: two classics, The Little Match Girl, a tribute to Hans Christian Andersen on the 150th anniversary of his death; and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, celebrating the centenary of its publication. Alongside these two works, in which his illustrations expand upon the narratives, he has published his own original book: Father Christmas’s Childhood, a large-format collector’s edition featuring his illustrations and a story written by Sébastien Perez, with whom he has collaborated on other successful projects (all published by Edelvives).

Following Benjamin Lacombe’s long-standing philosophy of observing with depth and reflection the beauty of the marginal or non-canonical, this book on the origin of Santa Claus is transgressive in proposing a character with values ​​opposed to those currently held or denounced by some, even because there are those who praise or flaunt a lack of solidarity, incomprehension, or cruelty, as he explains in the second part of this interview.

Winston Manrique Sabogal. In a time of such plurality in so many things, from the political to the aesthetic, there is a tendency toward mixing, discovering, and accepting beauties that were previously marginalized or marginalized, embracing them naturally. Something you have always highlighted and championed: what is beauty?

Benjamin Lacombe. It is also something cultural and linked to culture. We cannot, at a time when we are influenced by culture, by our upbringing, and by how we have been educated, determine what is beautiful and what is not. Furthermore, there’s an individual aspect; everyone has their own preferences. For example, there were things I found beautiful that people told me weren’t, that they were awful. I loved drawing insects, spiders, or leafless trees that people told me were sad. What I don’t like to draw are perfectly pristine, mechanical forms and things like that.

W. Manrique Sabogal. As a child, I already had an inclination towards the unconventional, towards finding beauty in what is considered ugly, as Charles Baudelaire did.

Benjamin Lacombe. I felt drawn to the strange. I have a certain fondness for the eccentric, the odd. They didn’t frighten me. On the contrary, I saw a certain beauty in them. Peculiar characters who had a certain presence. That seemed fascinating to me. And I’ve always included them in my novels. I’ve been doing it for twenty years now.

What should be beautiful or not beautiful?

In literature, we see completely different faces, skin colors that are completely varied compared to what came before. So, in Santa’s Childhood, we included other characters. Nobody told us that Mrs. Claus wasn’t blonde or Afro-textured. Readers don’t care. They don’t question us anymore, like they did a few years ago.

When we did The Appenzell Family (2020), it was the opposite. That is, we were talking about monstrosity. And then we said: Monstrosity isn’t what you see, because it’s something intrinsic to the actions.

Beauty is the act. In Santa Claus’s case, it’s the act of being generous, of seeking the good of others.

W. Manrique Sabogal. Sébastien, do you remember a book that made you think you wanted to write?

Sébastien Perez. I didn’t have that need. I had a more technical and scientific path. The goal was to invent stories, not so much to write; it’s something I’ve been doing all my life. My parents weren’t big readers, but my brother and I made up a lot of stories.

Benjamin Lacombe. Sébastien had an inner universe with a great capacity. When I met him, his ability to create, to innovate, to invent was impressive. He’s forgetful. He’s immersed in invention, in creativity, not in the repetitive, everyday world of nostalgia.

However, I’ve been surrounded by books. I lived in a house full of books, and I’ve reproduced exactly the same thing. At home, it’s chaos; books consume us. What we read, what we discover through books, defines us much more than our clothes, how we behave, or the choices we make.

Books have always been accessible to me, readily available; they’ve been a true refuge. Something we could project ourselves into, delve into, and, well, escape to the other side. For me, books have been the backbone of my life.

The first authors, probably of fairy tales, would be the Brothers Grimm or Andersen. I remember picture books that really caught my attention as a child, like those by Maurice Sendak; I loved them. The books were published by a publishing house called L’école des femmes. The books I read as a child were already feminist books, feminist manifestos.

Rose Bonbon was a pink elephant who didn’t want to stay pink anymore; she wanted to be gray for the rest of her life. And another book called The Gift was very similar, a bit anti-sexist. And my mother would leave them within easy reach, because that’s how my mother was, and still is.

W. Manrique Sabogal. Would you say that’s the origin of your feminist perspective and awareness of equality, which you translate into your illustrations where women occupy an important place, both physically and intellectually, in their position in the world?

Benjamin Lacombe. Yes, yes. We are defined by our reading, by our literary choices. I’ve always loved the artists and painters who evoked that image: Leonardo da Vinci, Frida Kahlo, the entire Quattrocento, generally speaking, Egon Schiele, Caravaggio, and a couple more of these artists whose position in the world didn’t necessarily conform to the norm.

W. Manrique Sabogal. Was there any illustrator who inspired you to dedicate yourself to this art?

Benjamin Lacombe. If someone answers that, they’re making it up. That doesn’t exist, it doesn’t happen. It’s not like a moment like that arrives. The act of drawing is something completely natural. You start doing it when you’re a child; you don’t write, you draw. That’s how you express yourself: first with sounds, then movement, and then with drawing. It’s something that’s been done since we were in caves; there was no writing, there was drawing, painting. I’ve been painting since the beginning and I’ve kept going. I’ve never stopped.

W. Manrique Sabogal. This book, Santa Claus’s Childhood, is an original story. Whose idea was it? Because it imagines the genesis of each of the 24 elements of the universal imagery of Christmas or Santa Claus, from the tree to why he gives gifts.

Benjamin Lacombe. I worked by observing Santa Claus and questioning and asking myself, as I usually do: Why a fir tree? Why does he travel in a sleigh? Why are there reindeer? It was during the research process that I realized there were elements surrounding Santa Claus that didn’t exist in French culture. The fact that, for example, the one who delivers the letters is the sparrow.

So, little by little, we learned and built the 24 stories. And in each story, we recreated a universe, so that each one was independent.

In this case, did the creation of a story come first, and then the illustration, or did they happen in parallel? Although, in some stories, your image (Perez’s) came first, and that inspired a story. Only in Frida did the image come first, giving rise to the book, inspiring Sébastien. Always, always, always, it’s the text first, and then the drawing. Once the image is there, there are slight changes.

W. Manrique Sabogal. You break the mold and create your own reinterpretations of stories or classics. For example, a couple of years ago with The Little Mermaid, which you created as Black. What’s that approach like?

Benjamin Lacombe. It’s great that you mention reinterpretation. I see it that way because that’s precisely the objective: to propose a new interpretation, a new way of reading the text, different from the truly classic one. First, I have to like the text.

W. Manrique Sabogal. The same thing has happened with classics for adults. For example, Notre-Dame de Paris, Tales of Mystery and Imagination, or Carmen, where there’s a genuine discovery. He did it with Andersen’s The Ugly Duckling, which has as its underlying theme that Andersen, according to some letters, is interpreted as wanting to be a woman.

Benjamin Lacombe. There’s a real work of searching, of research, to understand the origin of each book. Why was it written? What is the real theme? Most people get stuck on the surface. For example, in The Little Match Girl: Oh, poor thing, she was dying, she had little matches, she went barefoot through the snow. And that’s how it is, but those are the events. The question is the reason for the book or what its purpose is. What is Andersen ultimately talking about? Because when we’re talking about the essence of the story, it’s about creating something with enormous power.

Why are they classics?

Because they truly strike a chord that transcends generations, eras, and so on. And the theme of The Little Match Girl is precisely the lack of empathy, indifference. Something we are completely inundated with right now.

Now it happens with social media; some people see the sorrow of others and scroll past, they couldn’t care less. The problem is the same: indifference.

That’s why we want to reflect it. Also from a graphic point of view. What is it about? Matches. What is the pit? Well, coal. That’s why I used charcoal, the whole universe with charcoal. I haven’t tried to hide the sadness, the harshness. I’ve shown it with this expressionist approach, but I’ve also demonstrated the power of imagination and dreams. Because it also speaks of hope when a match is lit; there is hope, there is a flame. And I used that yellowish-green fluorescent color that gives us that feeling, the idea of ​​dreams.

W. Manrique Sabogal. The girl lighting matches that surround her like fireflies.

Benjamin Lacombe. And in this case, I think: She lights something at night. Usually, during the night. And, indeed, it creates a magical atmosphere.

There are several common elements in the three recently published books. They are three works from different eras: a children’s classic, a century-old classic for adults, and a contemporary work of his own creation. Lacombe has spoken of empathy and solidarity. And in them, one verb is very present: the verb “to desire”, in all its senses. The illustrator laments that indifference, a lack of solidarity, and noise seem to prevail on social media and the internet, fostering a society where everything is ephemeral and superficial, and where desire tends to dilute, atrophy, or become distorted.

Winston Manrique Sabogal. How do you think this new digital world is affecting desire? What transformations is desire, the very concept of desiring, undergoing with social media having accelerated a dizzying shift in our perception of life?

Benjamin Lacombe. Precisely what I try to do, and what I feel resonates with, is precisely to rekindle the desire for books. Even through reading itself, and by observing that no other activity evokes this in the human brain, nor does any other activity produce those neural connections or actually enhance them. I want to remind everyone that books amplify creativity; it’s a virtue unique to true reading.

That’s the desire I want to create: the desire to read books. It’s what I’ve been working on for twenty years. To provoke that desire for reading. That’s what we’ve done by working on these sophisticated book-objects, so that many people will want to own them. So that they’ll have that desire to possess our books, to touch them, to read them. And this is so important in this increasingly virtual world we live in—that it serves as a counterweight to a lasting object.

The theme of this book, Santa’s Childhood, is also transmission, contrasting it with the ephemeral nature of a video, something that can be used and thrown away. It’s about creating a lasting object that can be shared, shown to others, and passed down from generation to generation.

Especially in this consumerist society with all the environmental issues, and so on. I hate anything disposable. And, the truth is, a book obviously consumes resources, but then you keep it.

W. Manrique Sabogal. I’d like you to elaborate on the afterword you wrote for this edition of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, which you illustrated. You talk about the idea of ​​that mirage we experienced in the 1920s, amidst the abundance, the glitz, and so on. And, according to your afterword: are we really peering into an abyss?

Benjamin Lacombe. Of course, we are reliving the abyss of the Great Gatsby era. History repeats itself. What is The Great Gatsby about? It’s about an era of opulence, about those who live in a bubble. We live in a society of social bubbles. We live immersed in social networks, each of us locked in our own group. But we don’t share with others, we don’t engage in dialogue with others. Bubbles, too, at the level of life. There are extremely wealthy social classes who live a life that has nothing to do with the lives of others, with the masses. It’s a very rich 1%. And the same thing happens in The Great Gatsby. That social class that doesn’t care about anything, that tramples over others. Only in the last fifteen pages of the novel do we get to know him, we learn who the Great Gatsby is.

In today’s world, many present modified, transformed, edited images of themselves. We don’t know who they are. We don’t know anyone. We don’t know what they think, what they say.

And there are other problems, for example: the anger of the masses, of the proletariat, of the people, but also the wars that are palpable in The Great Gatsby. The disaster that is about to happen. And now, we also have war at Europe’s doorstep, because Russia has brought it. The rise of antisemitism, just like in The Great Gatsby, in the 1920s and 30s like never before; it’s when Bambi emerges, and I’ve already illustrated that, by the way, the rise of antisemitism speaks to us.

W. Manrique Sabogal. That’s why the recreation and vindication of a myth like Santa Claus is so striking. In these times, he seems transgressive because of his generosity, solidarity, empathy, respect, and love for others—values ​​opposed to those currently held or denigrated by some, especially by certain political figures. And there are those who praise or flaunt a lack of solidarity, incomprehension, intolerance, force, or cruelty in the name of supposed freedom or security.

Benjamin Lacombe. We face this because we have instilled in people that values ​​like those described in this book are weaknesses. Because many would see solidarity, generosity, and empathy as a genuine weakness. And, on the other hand, that what one must be is a bully, like a real-life Donald Trump. And that, in reality, is not a strength. I think it’s the opposite. Solidarity, generosity, tolerance, understanding, respect, kindness, and empathy are the opposite of a weakness. I believe that’s precisely what made humanity successful, because humanity was initially in a bad position, and that’s humanity’s secret.

What has truly been humanity’s success and prosperity? Helping one another. That’s what has made the difference, but we’re forgetting that the origin of humanity’s success is solidarity and generosity.

That’s the origin of our success.

• With translation assistance from Robert Lienhard.

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