Solastalgie. 2023 / en cours.

Du hasard objectif et de l’instant arrêté propre à la photographie.

Le paysage n’est qu’un prétexte. Je cherche à explorer la poétique que peut engendrer le hasard quand il participe à l’élaboration formelle d’une image. Cette fois-ci plus d’aquarium (série is that your Garden) mais l’océan comme environnement. L’approche reprend le même principe : Utiliser l’eau comme matériau principal et convoquer le hasard en lui offrant du temps de présence derrière l’objectif. Je ne retouche pas mes images et ne maitrise donc pas ce que vont m’offrir météo et paysages. C’est le jeu. Vitesse et direction du vent, nuages, houle, marée; lumières, couleurs seront les composantes qui devront à un moment donné s’accorder pour faire oeuvre. Ces instants où les contingences seront réunies pour saisir  la bonne photographie sont rares. Mais quand tout s’accorde, l’image recherchée, celle que l’on attend, autant visuelle que métaphysique, me semble enfin obtenue. J’aime penser alors à la notion d’aura de Walter Benjamin pour décrire cette présence, ce je-ne-sais-quoi de transcendant dans une photographie… Qu’est ce que l’’aura, cette  trame singulière d’espace et de temps : l’unique apparition d’un lointain, si proche soit-il.

Solastalgie. 2023 / work in progress.

Objective chance and the frozen moment specific to photography.

The landscape is just a pretext. After my work for Is That Your Garden, I wanted to continue exploring the poetics that fortuitous encounters captured by photography can generate. A poetics full of melancholy that fits so well with my relationship with the world. This time, no more aquarium but the ocean as a huge and aquatic environment. The process remains the same: Use the liquid element, water, and summon chance by offering it presence time behind the lens. I don't retouch my images and therefore don't control what weather and landscapes will offer me. Speed and direction of the wind, clouds, swell, tide; lights, colors are the multiple elements that must agree at a specific time. These moments where contingencies will be gathered to capture the right photograph are rare. It's the game, it's complicated, it can take days or never come. But when everything agrees, the image sought, the one that is as visual as it is metaphysical, is finally obtained. Happy, we then think of the notion of aura developed by Walter Benjamin to describe this sacred je-ne-sais-quoi of transcendent  in an artistic representation. "What is the aura, this singular weft of space and time: the only appearance of a distant, no matter how close it is."

I don't retouch my photographs to stay in touch with a world that tends to disappear. Getting beautiful and real things through slow and non-virtual processes is a relationship to the world that I care about and that I praise. Just imagine that you learn afterwards that a movie or romance novel that you loved, which has been with you for years, has finally been put by an artificial intelligence.