Man wishes by all means at his disposal to learn, discover, redefine the world around him. Throughout his life, he will try to understand the world outside and within him. He will marvel, he will witness happy, hostile and sometimes dangerous events. What the photographer proposes is to reveal all these realities, to know and recognize the world that surrounds him, even though he never ceases to redefine himself and it. The advent of photography in 1839 created in the human being, over the years, an ethic of vision, the definition of what is beautiful or ugly, of what we have the right to look at. Yet, these boundaries never stop being pushed back, violated. (Sometimes it is intolerable to look at some photographs). There are multiple reasons, and intentions, too, like this photograph of Th Kim Phúc, taken on the 8th of June 1972, that shocked public opinion and alerted the American population to the atrocities of the Vietnam War. The release of that photograph created a scandal. President Nixon himself cast doubt on it, and the response of the photographer, Nick Ut, was cutting. He retorted that the photograph was as authentic as the Vietnam War itself. Nick Ut created a new knowledge, and thereby a new power, that of modifying a new matrix, of changing the world – of creating a new order.
Author Anton Ehrenzweig notes in his book, The Hidden Order of Art, that this occurs “through a process, first of differentiation and then quiet indifferentiation of the real world, what Glen Gould calls: the world of negation. In these moments of creation, the human being would no longer make a distinction between the real world and the imaginary world into which he is plunged. This psychological state, this source of images may stem from all those he saw during the course of his life and would create a family tree (a catalogue) of unconscious images.”[1] What we do when we create, is to correlate images, a body of images that we may have seen in the past; they mix and form one sole image. So what the history of photography has done, create a succession of disparate images, a historical anthology of images without any really coherent links between them, would follow the same process of creation that leads to producing one: a catalogue of images that, together, have no coherence.
There are many technical means for producing an image, because of the photographic tools (camera, lenses…), which are all industrial objects. Besides, throughout history, photography was described as not being an art, but rather a mere representation of reality. Like the naturalist and realist artistic movements that believed photography should only be the objective representation of reality, without any intervention by man. But is that possible, since defining one’s art as an objective revelation of reality is, in itself, subjective! Photographic tools allow one to do an inventory of the world around us while changing it physically. The human eye does not see the world in the same way as a lens, as a digital sensor or a negative. These fundamental differences give photography a field of vision of its own, which it imposes on man as a reality. “The camera atomizes reality, converts it into manageable and opaque objects. This is a world view that refuses interdependence and continuity, and which confers upon all moments the characteristics of a mysterious enigma”.[2] But what about this photographic reality? Photography has a troubled relationship with interpretation, with the intervention of the author in his images, as if it were not subject to the same imperative as the other forms of art, like literature or painting. In fact, the photograph misleads its viewer by giving the illusion of objective reality – what you see is always true – while, in reality, the photographer is a real messenger. The choice of subject, the way they introduce the actors in their images vary from author to author. Nothing is real; everything is unreal.
But who are these enigmatic photographers? Bill Brand, Arbus, Brassaï, Man Ray, Moholmy-Nagy, Sandy Skoglund, Schmölz, Philippe Halsman, Saudek, Herbert List, Richard Avedon, Andrea Gursky, Andreas Feininger, Ansel Adams, Geof Kern, Robert Doisneau, Dorothea Lange… All these photographers express a very special view of the world outside, which often leads us to wonder: in which world are we really living? Diane Arbus, the first photographer to expose at the Venice Biennial, focuses on people you could never think of as simply poor unfortunates. Yet they are not aware of their differences. She photographs them with compassion and tries to arouse our beautiful conscience. Richard Avedon asks his subjects to recall all the moments, events and choices that they should have done differently. His portraits describe the passage of unflattering and even cruel moments of human existence. He stares at his subjects. Robert Doisneau, a street photographer, focuses on the ordinary people of his time. His images, full of humour, reflect a very humanist view of his contemporaries. Andreas Feininger is interested in the geometry of the world. Bill Brand, who would like to take photos with a fisheye (if he could), takes very mysterious, inscrutable photographs. Many elements, many ideas clash in their images. Do they do real photos? Do they do beauty? What is their real message? And although we try to interpret these images, we do not quite manage to do so. They show the fascinating transfiguration of our world, casting a new look at our own existence. After having Man Ray photograph her, Marchioness Cassati is said to have told him that he’d photographed her soul. The official photographer of many intellectuals and artists of his time, Man Ray was strongly influenced by the Surrealist movement. He presents his ‘rayographies’ as the possible photographic representation of that movement.
During the 1920s, artists reacting to the bourgeoisie, which had created a materialistic society that led to the existence of a superficial life, set up a new movement inspired by the works of Freud on the sub-conscious, surrealism. André Breton tries to define it : “ SURREALISME, n m. – a pure psychic automatism through which one proposes to express, either orally or in writing, or in any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictated by thought in the absence of any control exercised by reason, outside of any esthetic or moral concern”.[3] Making the subconscious work without any preconceived ideas, using procedures such as automatic writing that prevents reason from acting, prohibiting the superego from dismantling the train of thought of the subconscious, the advent of dreams as the sole reality. Can a photograph be really surrealist? Is it in itself so? By the act of taking a photo shot, that is to say the miniaturized and dramatized doubling of a moment, of an event, of a person that the natural vision of the naked eye cannot engender, that vision at least is doctored. Is it a dream in itself? This photograph, which is always a form of the past, of another world, has existed in real life. The photograph of Arbus, where you see an old couple disguised as a king and queen, seems to be part of a dream. It comes from another era, from a world past. The subjects that photographers conjure up are often heterogeneous. One just needs to look at the photos of Man Ray, Ardus, Saudek and the others… Moreover, their subjects, which are often unique, present objects in opposition to others, and that is what gives them their strength.
One only has to think of the paintings of Salvador Dali, of the ‘Woman with Leaves’ sculpture of Pablo Picasso. The juxtaposition of many different images in a collage is a procedure used by Surrealist artists. This catalogue of real images comes from just about everywhere. Generally, one does not choose all the images one sees. Even if it seems clear that photography borrows ideas from the Surrealist movement, is it possible for the photographer not to allow his reason to intervene at any time? With material that requires a minimum of logic, if only to make it function. In my opinion, believing that reason never intervenes is a utopian dream. To write, I need to use words, even if the words end up tying us to a certain reality of things and having a concrete meaning, without which they would be just prehistoric murmurs, which would have just as much meaning as the sounds of nature. That is perhaps another of the elements of this concept of creation. It brings us back to the origins of life, a type of ancient language, like the advent of a creative big bang, of an ocean filled with primitive images with the sounds of the sea as background noise, whispering images in our ears while rocking us in its arms. It’s perhaps these primitive symbols that Brassaï captured when he took photographs of the graffiti on the stone walls of Paris.
And I, who am I? A photographer? An artist? Which artistic movement is closest to my images? Well, I describe myself as a stroller, a gleaner, a hunter, a fisher … who puts chaos in order or creates it. In fact, I believe I wish to fill your catalogue with new images. The style matters little, or the tastes of the day; what matters to me is doing something beautiful, ugly, real. I’m not looking for happiness or sadness or artificial neutrality. I want to strip you of all your make-up and then coat you in glazed chocolate. Real sweet happiness… But photographs resemble surrealist photos; their form, not their content. Without making it a dogma, I wish to surprise. During shoots, my characters are positioned carefully, my concepts are pre-established, and at the same time very improvised. I adapt to the situation so as to create the best image possible. Sometimes I try to destabilize people, sometimes to amaze them. The locations impose their dictates. I compare my creative process to walking. I go from point A towards point B, a winding journey between an image that comes to my mind and the reality that appears before me. The main difficulty, the photographer’s ability to adapt, is severely tested during a take, especially when you are not doing commercial photography and nothing is mapped out in advance. With artistic photography, even though there are different types, there isn’t really a standard; creation is a free activity and has to remain so. I do not block my vision by liking only one category of photos. I embrace them all. I think the diversity of my image demonstrates that. I leave room for chance, my intuition guides me a lot when I discover a new place for a shoot, but that chance is always verified, validated by my photographer’s instinct. I am not a spectator because I am a prospector, a seeker, a traveler… My creative process is similar to what I described earlier. The ideas submerge me and probably come from my subconscious. I see the images I create. They have to be singular, with no judgement or prejudice, but with a veracity that remains mysterious, inexplicable. I do not do totally realistic, descriptive, scientific photos. I use reality like a child for whom everything is yet to be discovered, to be rediscovered. With my sharp vision, I remain focused, straddling the world with my head filled with ideas that flood over me. I am the main character of my photos; I am a multitude of persons at the same time, literally and figuratively. That increases the level of difficulty since I do not see what I am doing. I am a photographer who works blindly. I am a messenger with no messages. I do not try to give my images a deeper meaning. Many photographers do journalistic or documentary photos with the idea of transforming society; those photographs reflect a situation in an environment. Certain photographers like Frank Kappa even died from that. Me, I want my images to be outside of time and space, without messages – just a spectator fleeing from his own reality, his own condition in life. I do not try to change society, but to get out of it. It’s my way of contesting, without manipulating. The media often have a tentacular message that they try to spread everywhere, around the world. Messages are commonly manipulated, so much so that an image can describe the exact opposite of reality. Everything depends on the messenger and the message he or she wishes to convey. We live in a slightly virtual world. Man is even given over to virtual reality, a universe through which he becomes a spectator of his own life. He believes he is living through things, but they are all unreal. What I like about photography is that it remains anchored in life, in an exchange between individuals that it sets in action and even in reaction. All the themes the photographer approaches can be noteworthy; it’s the author’s intervention that changes everything.
I have a project in mind: photographing the lanes of Montreal town; I want to make small scenarios there with characters. I have many ideas in mind, including becoming an alley cat. I would like to add small texts based on my photos, as I’ve done with this photo, “the seeker of light”.
A man seeks a light in the middle of the night; the reflection of a star that could blind him, intoxicate him. His observations exasperate him. He can see only the shadows of very distant suns while roaming the forest like a wild animal with his heart beating wildly. He perspires, and cries out « but where is that celestial body that is giving me so much heat? I can only see the rays of the moon ! » With his eyes closed, he shouts a thousand and one silly words and continues to search the earth. The sun rises. The man is still cold. He remains there, his eyes wide open, his body tired, his spirit troubled and continues his search.
Moreover, I am travelling to Ontario, according to my technique of blurring photos of the city of Toronto.
Since the daguerrotype,
the evolution of photography has followed a meteoric ascent; fixed images are
more and more accessible; and they turn around in our heads at a crazy speed,
wishing to astonish us. It becomes more and more difficult to find new images.
Yet, these image-captors search and search again. As André Breton said
about Christopher Columbus: Christopher Columbus should have set out to
discover America with [some] madmen.»[4] He was looking for the spice road and found
America. That’s what all photographers should aspire to.
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