The voices of the displaced_territories_fraction_6a-b-c, each 130x90cm

The voices of the displaced_territories_fraction_11a-b-c, each 130x90cm

 

 where we’re from...Indistinct shapes and shapeless masses at first as if waking up, colored by a mixture of hope and regrets as the day becomes clearer, then fragmented, divided, unstable but finally readable.

Displaced... memory territory 

It happens that the memory is in pieces. So far away, after such long wanderings, trials, doubts and pain. The memory of places, places of « before ». The migrant exists from before the trauma of exile, rupture and oblivion. Memories forgotten, dreaded and desired as a condition of marching forward. Memory filters the territory of origins, deforms it, idealises it or curses it. All that remains for the migrant is often the effort of memory for feeling human. As if grasping on to faded memories, the image appears like indistinct forms and formless masses at first as one awakens, coloured by a mixture of hope and regrets as the day becomes clearer, fragmented, divided, unstable but finally readable when the body is functioning at its full. An image like a mirage, and which relieves, which reassures not to be real, to be only an image without future. Territories, Others, « similars » condemned to be only images. The reality of the migrant, like his body, is forever fragmented by the fear of forgetting, by the hope of a return. The memories of the migrant are not souvenirs, they are solely the condition of being and of existing, they alone make it possible to blur, to soften the fracture of displacement. Displacement, here, is not a movement, it is not “going forward”, does not open onto any exotic encounters, it is a wound, at best like a scar.

the voices of the displaced_fragmented bodies

 

the Voices of displaced_EXODUS, each 200x200cm

 

 

the voices of the displaced_fiction, each 130x90cm

the voices of the DISPLACED, each 187x86cm

 Displaced... the fragmented souls, Introduction.

This work is a series of impressions, fleeting and sometimes oppressive… Displaced persons or migrants carry within them, whatever their age, a weight of memories, of losses and regrets, of hope too. There is the effort to keep alive where we come from as if to confirm who we are. There are the territories, these objects (the territories) become sacred with uncertain contours and which are the subject of a constant work of memory. Nothing picturesque, green and wet grass, dilapidated walls, a cluttered and sad beach, everyday life that only moves them, who are deprived of it. The displaced, generic actors in this work, cling to these memories as their reason for being, for forgetting is like disappearing. Then there are bodies whose suffering we know, fragmented as they are, as if trapped in a mistreated identity by a world they feel hostile and which only provides them with obscurity. Bodies that, like territories, must be constantly remembered. The displaced are in an intimate struggle so that nothing is erased.

This memory at work is the only subject of this series.

A Long After [TIME] serie

A LONG AFTER_TIME 

A work on time? Like wondering what effect time has on us, by the “we” I mean the artists, creators, image makers in the broad sense. Time affects us, it is undeniable and irreversible, but that does not meet the challenge of making images from it. So I looked for points of view, “topics” where obviously time was at work. Either the images thus constructed, by their atmospheres, by the elements which compose them, by certain effects of color and depth, by their symbolism, revealed a “time” at work, or because the subjects themselves were like victims, which have become signs of a time that has passed, either, and it is not very different, because the fragile and ephemeral beauty of the subjects made them more susceptible, even more vulnerable to the tests of time, or finally because the time, which is neither speed nor duration, was just the space of unforeseen encounters. Time, this variable of physics which has neither speed, nor space nor does not require a particular environment to exist does not stop talking to us about the past and the future but forces us to “today” . Time is a mystery that cannot be named or figured, but “controls” us everywhere and always. Without time we would have a hard time having any consciousness or even just existing. Time, because we neither know how to name it nor decipher it, could well be everywhere in the image, whatever the image and without the image knowing it. The image as an idea of ​​space-time. This time which forever prevents the past from being altered, which condemns us to the moment already past, and only sparingly delivers clues to the future, gives the impression of knowing about us what we don’t. Given by physics or the fruit of consciousness, time is mysterious. However, things and events happen in time as if we were really only one of the objects of time.

Time is benevolent like those great cathedrals with invisible transcendences which welcome us and frighten us.

anonymous_attitudes_serie. each 150x150cm

 I smiled a little here at these prefabricated stories, these facial expressions and postures borrowed from magazines ... but with a certain tenderness for these heroes of a day crossed here and there at random in parks, cafes and streets. They are everywhere, sometime dressed as for a party, often accompanied by a camera accomplice charged with immortalising the moment. I just slipped into the scene for a few seconds, stealthily, slyly, to steal a bit of a moment that wasn't meant for me.

These images, more than others, exist only through the targets of future “voyeurs”. They are images to "appear" ... what we are not, what we are not enough.?. There is, here, only the subject and its face to face with the idea of itself.

It's all about waiting, nothing more ... being what you think you can be. The distance that is created between the subject and the image is also an enigma. Contrary to these smooth and magnificent shots of stereotypes, of these “too much” images, I wanted to muddy the waters a bit, to detach myself from the inescapable horizon that will make all of these images end up drowned in the immense loneliness of social networks.

Anonymous, necessarily anonymous ... There lies the “truth” of this series. Photography can no longer be “what was there”. I needed a certain fixity, like that of the silent icons. I also had to isolate them as in a sacred space that says nothing about them.  They are no longer characters, just attitudes, just simulacra. Simply put the images back in their world of images.

I had to dig deeper into myself to find the evidence of the photograph. Roland Barthes, “Camera Lucida”. 1980. Le Seuil edition.

The birth of the reader must be paid for by the death of the author. Roland. Barthes (in the death of the author / Le bruissement de la langue, Le Seuil edition. 1984).