temps de poses
Exposure Times
Effluves
A ROSARY OF EMOTIONS BEYOND THE IMAGE…
Even if the image carries within it the full spectrum of sensual vibrations from the trance state that gave birth to it, it is only its remnant. This condition allows it to become a filter through which the myriad perceptions it stimulates can pass once again.
The aim of my research, entitled “Temps de poses” (Time of Exposures), is to recover, in this “necessary passage”—a real moment of grace—all the flavors of the initial impressions and the colors of the emotional palette that engulfed me during the time of capture. I attempt to regenerate the sensual confusion in order to metaphorically formalize its essence into an aesthetic material sufficiently evocative.
I extract an entire graphic process from the focal point of memory that is the original image and stoke the embers of the sensual traces that have settled there. Their ribbons—deep or superficial—lead me back to their sources. Like the “serpent of temptation” confronting the swelling curves of the forbidden fruit, feelings until now latent reignite. Every trace becomes a pretext to configure a new graphic game of another jubilation, another possession, which floods the image with past phantoms.
Thus metaphorized, all that remains of the basic eroticism and aesthetic mastery in the initial framing, all that is obsessive, accidental, or deliberate, tends to fade in favor of a mutant universe that transcends its echo. The stark dualism of this poetic impulse amplifies the sequential anamorphosis of memory. It generates an ethereal “matter” that fertilizes new narrative faculties. The flows of this composite magma, traversed by selective memories, reorient the creative act. Amid chaos, iridescence, evanescence, entanglements, crystallizations, strata, filigrees… the dramaturgy of sensual flashes is reborn. An a posteriori emerges, revealing what the eye had captured and/or rejected.
I explore the uniqueness of these dreamlike moments to extract their most poetic substances. Even often dematerialized, the image intoxicates the mind through its remnants. This “primordial” dissection of the sensible world, made possible by the digital tool and perhaps only by it, opens a vision of the unseen, the silences of the unspoken, and the omniscience of the unconscious.
The French State, through the Centre des Monuments Nationaux, has provided Pascal di Péri with an exceptional venue. The space he has taken over is now one of the major attractions of Angers Castle. See below for the complete file.
The work: concepts and symbols
To take a photograph, to seize a light, to capture a moment… within the play of these virtual possessions, there is one circumstance—one alone—that elevates this operational field. It occurs when a woman offers herself to the gaze of my camera. This “offering”—to modesty stripped, to aesthetic-sensual interplay—gives rise to a disturbance of plural pleasures. The latent or overt eroticism that settles radiates captivating waves, making the theatricality of this instant singularly intense.
Yet, the eye to which she surrenders—in this platonic exhibition—is only one element determining the full alchemy of the image. The artist, the creator, here also master and voyeur, can reveal, beyond the frame, insights that interfere with aesthetic judgment. The unconscious partially references these enchanting effluences to inform the arbitrary of the plastic choices made. Inspiration captures, through the lens, the volatile essence of these reminiscences.
Within this relationship of restraint, of shyness, preserved or unveiled secrets, and playful glances… everything is emotional vibration. Here, the subject transcends the basic model/artist relationship. She becomes the muse. Her immobile, voluptuous dance, with desires that surface or assert themselves, impresses the pupil of the unconscious with extreme intensity. Within the space consumed by this disturbance, feverish excitement and fascination mingle. Dual-energy tensions combine in a sensual porosity: one draws a part of the “self” into the irrational realm of sovereign fantasies (which every sexual being harbors), the other directs, with analytical rigor, the staging of a space whose aesthetics are disciplined by a framework of inspired reason.
Creative thoughts clash with sexual instincts in a graphic and carnal interplay from which the photographic act feeds. A double play of pleasures and constraints, crossings of sensual energies and ethical landmarks magnified by complicity tending toward the absolute. Innocence cannot exist in this silent “body accord.” Each partner in this dance is an engaged being. A strange complicity—unequal yet complementary—exists only here. Like a trance, both actors suspend their daily lives, entering a timeless dimension, where sensitivity flirts with the lens, opening a parenthesis of unique intimacy. A fever consumes them, devouring conventional limits… a staggering encounter, jubilant in its oscillations between self, other, and art. Between libertinage and poetry lies the wild thrill of the enchanting shot.
Yet, the image resulting from these “encounters” captures only a fragment of this emotional nebula. Its narrative seizes but a hundredth of a second of the voluptuous reality that preceded it. Its account becomes almost univocal, even laconic. The shutter brings a finality to the frenzy of the “preliminaries.” A pleasure too brief… incomplete.
Indeed, the image born from this photographic coitus offers merely a glimpse of these moments. It is a synthesis which, because it reveals too much, reveals too little… Its frame, in its imposed finitude, compresses the field of emotion, shortens time, constrains space, and purifies the realm of sensitivity. It seeks to embody the quintessence of a continuum, but is only the visible tip of an iceberg whose unconscious depths remain mostly inaccessible or forgotten.
