2010-01-29

The magic




                                        
                                            Soeur Yvonne- Marseille- 1990




                                    
                                            Street musician- Marseille- 1990



A few months ago, I bought a scanner, a Canoscan 8800F. I then repatriated all of my early negatives
back from France, some of them having no contact sheets, I began scanning and retracing recurrent themes in my practice, as well as the intrinsic evolution brought by different equipment,  skills and editing in regard of the ever changing contexts. Some photographs were very vivid in my memory, I considered them key examples of what I wanted to show; not because of their iconography, or composition but because they carried some emotions which, aged 19 I did not know how to express. It was for me the realisation that magic was at work in the photographic process like in no other pictorial means. Mostly,photography seems to be echoing the raw energy of the music I listened to, the same instantaneity,the same power to constantly regenerate itself without having to establish a pompous statement. Those blurred images had the heaviness of a bass line, ripped of details, the impact was  direct. Blur photography became mainstream around 1985, it permeated from art and fashion into advertising and through daring young picture editors, to documentary; thus giving out of focus and blurred photographs the credibility to become the showcase for the postmodernist era. Music had been leading the way for moody teenagers, with band like Suicide, Joy Division , My Bloody Valentine, and  what would then be tagged as lo-fi and slow-prog(ressive); Galaxy 500 and Codeine were the epitome of slow motion and late night tale and inspired me to create many blurs and"true black" in my photographs.
Recently, I have heard some reminiscence in german and canadian electronic music, and new "it" band
the XX are definitely on the dark side of the moon; and with the people at The Impossible Project ready for the relaunch of instant Polaroid film, I'm quite certain that we will soon see a return to blurred, grainy pictures which should give photography students some freedom to experiment with the medium instead of calibrating their monitors.



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