Confrontation (1992 - to date)
I chose to ride the tiger of an intensive life, across multiple activities, geographies and cultures.
For more than 30 years, I have the faced in my photographic projects
the absurdity and the dull violence of the postmodern life I have been thrown in. They stand in the brutalist architectecture and in the urban sprawl of the cities I was living in (Paris, Shanghai)
and I visited (New-York, Tokyo Honk-Kong or New-Delhi), in no man’s lands,
and in the symbolic figure of the Passerby. How to find one’s place and meaning in such deshumanized and desacralized environments? As a result of what, prevails a sense of seclusion and anonymity among a stream of passers-by, guided towards who knows what, captured by an imperceptible yet strict control.
Brutalism
Lost in the mist
The docks anesthetized by the night follow their own trail
The snow falls from weariness
In white and obese smoke.
We walk along the brick factories
The gates, the blast furnaces
The curved highway
The symbols and false lights
A flight in a single direction
Flows, cadences
Nobody.
The docks anesthetized by the night follow their own trail
The snow falls from weariness
In white and obese smoke.
We walk along the brick factories
The gates, the blast furnaces
The curved highway
The symbols and false lights
A flight in a single direction
Flows, cadences
Nobody.
Hope
There was in the blue of the sky
A fragment of this dream
That I never dared
To fly
A fragment of this dream
That I never dared
To fly
In My Solitude
Alone on the threshold of a dreamless night
Dreaming of the perfect outline
Of an unknown circle
I have lived
Dreaming of the perfect outline
Of an unknown circle
I have lived
Passers-by
Nowhere to move out
Nowhere to hang out
No alpha no omega
Spiralling in meaningless circles
Ringing loudness bells
Of solitude and haggard rushes
We are passers-by.
Thrown on a nearby pavement
Under clothless lights
We grip rusty rails and fallen ideas
And breathe fresh air in consumerism
Our fulfilment lies in concrete
Our love in mirrors
We seek forgiveness in speed
and sins in cans.
We are all passers-by.
The white shirts shed a misleading light
The night looks as bright as the day
Shadows cross fearless
The old order is broken
Who keeps the sacred fire and the dream burning?
Blinded by a dust of power
Bonded by agreed mistakes
It’s hard to swim against the flow
Even to look back to the source
Alone
And we stand homeless in our crowdy dwellings.
O Passer-by
Look out at the cloud
And tell the Street we lie here
Obedient to its words.
(All the poems except “Passers-by” translated from French by the Author)
Nowhere to hang out
No alpha no omega
Spiralling in meaningless circles
Ringing loudness bells
Of solitude and haggard rushes
We are passers-by.
Thrown on a nearby pavement
Under clothless lights
We grip rusty rails and fallen ideas
And breathe fresh air in consumerism
Our fulfilment lies in concrete
Our love in mirrors
We seek forgiveness in speed
and sins in cans.
We are all passers-by.
The white shirts shed a misleading light
The night looks as bright as the day
Shadows cross fearless
The old order is broken
Who keeps the sacred fire and the dream burning?
Blinded by a dust of power
Bonded by agreed mistakes
It’s hard to swim against the flow
Even to look back to the source
Alone
And we stand homeless in our crowdy dwellings.
O Passer-by
Look out at the cloud
And tell the Street we lie here
Obedient to its words.
(All the poems except “Passers-by” translated from French by the Author)
From projects and series completed between 1992 and 2016, in New-York, Paris, Shanghai and China.