As for his artistic education, François Hers read books and reviews, manifests and other founding texts on European art history from 1900 to 1940: exhaustive publications left by Henry van de Velde in their house built in 1927, the "Nouvelle Maison," and that has since become a historic monument.
After a brief passage in architecture, questioning himself about what he could bring to the history of modern art he admired so much, François Hers understood that it was not with a traditional career and means that he could concretize a lifelong ambition that would guide his entire body of work.
[7] He published, in 1982, in the daily newspaper Libération, a picture a day for five weeks, in association with a commentary, a reflection on the photographic act based on his relationship with the city he lives in: Paris.
In 1981, he exhibited Intérieurs[8] at the Centre Pompidou, along with a book published by the Brussels Modern Architecture Archives Editions, which stroke a responsive chord beyond the art world in Human sciences.
In 1983, François Hers had his book of photographs Récit published by Lebeer-Hossmann in Brussels and by Herscher in Paris; it was issued under the title A Tale by the Thames & Hudson editions in London.
[7] With a text resulting from dialogues with Jean-François Chevrier and graphic design by Roman Cieslewicz, he presented his thrive to free the modern artist from a situation where he is doomed to remain the lonely hero of his own story.
A scenario in which the work itself is locked in the status of object, part of a property or as a traded good, without being able to concretize the ambitions of a generation of artists: change the world and place art within life.
A quest that will be qualified as “primitive.”[10] In 1986, he took part in the exhibition Chambres d’Amis (Guest Rooms) in Ghent, Belgium, for which the organizer Jan Hoet was inspired by his book Interieurs, and after working with a major contemporary art gallery, Gewad, directed by Joost Declerq, François Hers was definitely convinced of the need to go on searching the means to reach his goals elsewhere than in museums, through unprecedented cooperation.
Once more in 1983, in response to a request made by Bernard Latarjet on behalf of the DATAR, (the French Inter-ministerial Delegation for Territorial and Regional Attractiveness), François Hers proposed the creation of a photographic mission for which he conceived the protocol, directing it himself until 1989.
Elsewhere, in a botanical and animal park,[15] also under the aegis of the Fondation de France, he proposed to call on the Architects Patrick Bouchain (FR) and Loïc Julienne, with their teams of landscapers and Graphic designers, to bring shape to the cultural dimensions of this place.
He also called on researchers to conceive responses that could be applied to one of the principle questions posed by this place and to which our society is hereby confronted: how may one move from a predatory to a diplomatic relationship with the living and the land?
A long period when artists assumed a decisive social role because the principle motor of creation was, according to Hers, the invention of Individuality and emancipation in all the modes of perception of the world and all forms of personal expression.