Jean-Louis Garnell

Statement

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Almost forty years have passed clearing the path in search of the works that dot it. From the first black and white essays of the photography apprenticeship period, the transition to colour in large format, the adoption of digital technology and right up to the very last pieces, the world has changed, the questioning and the forms has evolved, and this has been a natural part of the works. No doubt one can recognize in all the series or pieces a small family resemblance, which makes them recognizable, even personal, signed. To make with the closest, the here and now, the support of a questioning on our existence in this world and on its representation in general photographic but not only, the objects, the drawings and the words can also become necessary to make work. Linking complexity to the greatest simplicity, accepting what is given in the light of each day, making do with it, starting from the particular to join the general. Working always, with a view to later or never, in the silence or noise of the days - It is not what shouts loudest that is the most contemporary - We are responsible for the fragile. Stéphane Mallarmé - Marina Tsvetaeva - Paul Ricoeur.

Curriculum

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Born in Brittany in 1954, began photography at high school, studied computer engineering in Toulouse, research on computer speech synthesis, then adult educator to earn a living, learning 50,000 black and white negatives.

Purchases a 4x5" camera at the end of 1983, first colour images, set of urban landscapes in Toulouse and its surroundings in 1984, winner of the Kodak Critics’ Prize, meets Jean-François Chevrier and the photographers of the DATAR Photographic Mission which he joins in 1985-1986.

Jean‑Louis Garnell Werke 1985–95

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Jean-Louis Garnell, Recent works

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Jean-Louis Garnell

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Alive

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Par le noir

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Par le noir

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Staircase B

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Jean-Louis Garnell

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Pictures for a while

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0€

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17 Juin – 17 Septembre 2023

It was after visiting the Pinault collection at the former Bourse du Commerce, where so much money was spent on the renovation and purchase of the pieces presented, of which the copy of the Abduction of the Sabines made in wax and destined to be melted down represents the obscene archetype of expenditure, that the desire to create this series of 0€ pieces was formalised. They are all rigorously made of found objects, often thrown away, or plant elements collected in nature. In the past I have made several series with found things, Compositions 2009, Bois graphités 2009-2011, Walls 2012-2013, but in this new series, the logic of a zero cost for their production is pushed to the extreme.

Objets dans l'objectif

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La force de l'art

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Storie immaginate in luoghi reali

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What is photography ?

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UNE HISTOIRE. Art, architecture, design, des années 1980 à nos jours

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Commissions

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A chronological listing of public commissions and projects.

2007

Escalier B — Reggio‑Emilia.
Morimondo — MUFOCO, Milan.

2000

Mutations — Bordeaux.
Les intérieurs du Monde — Zaanstad.

1998

1% ENSGTI — Pau.
Porto Marghera — Venice.
Vues sur Parc — Sceaux.

1996–1997

Université Technologique de Compiègne.

1995

Ville de Fos‑Sur‑Mer.

1993

Du musée au musée — Musée des Beaux‑Arts, Lyon.
Quinze Artistes dans le métro — Oeuvre pour la station Jolimont, Toulouse.

1989

Mission Photographique Transmanche.

1988

1% pour le collège de Labruguière.

1985–1986

Mission Photographique de la DATAR.

Collections

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A selection from public and private collections.

Public Collections

Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris
Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
Fond national d’art contemporain
Fotomuseum Winterthur
Union des Banques Suisses, Paris
Collection Bernd Künne, Hanovre
Huis Marseille, Amsterdam
Fondation COFF, San Sebastian
FRAC Midi-Pyrénées
FRAC Rhône-Alpes
FRAC Poitou-Charentes
FRAC Pays de Loire
FRAC Franche-Comté
FRAC PACA
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
Stadtwerke Saarbrücken
Musée de la Roche-sur-Yon
Centre régional de la photographie Nord Pas-de-Calais
Fos-Action-Culture, Fos-sur-Mer
Fond municipal d’art contemporain, Paris
Fond municipal d’art contemporain, Marseille

Private Collections

Paris, Naples, Turin, Rome, Marseille, Stockholm, Zürich, Hanovre, Bruxelles, Saint-Étienne, Los Angeles, etc.

Bibliography

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A chronological list of publications and catalogues.

2025

Les spectres , Mettray “Illuminations”, Mettray Éditions.

2024

ArtCarjat 2024 , Biennale, Fareins.

2022

MÉTAMORPHOSE, LA PHOTOGRAPHIE EN FRANCE 1968–1989, Pavillon Populaire, Montpellier.

2021

1976–1986, Une décennie de couleur , Ed. Lienard.
Nachbilder , Eine Foto Text Anthologie, ed. Spector Books.

2020

Photography to the test of abstraction , Centre Photographique d’Île‑de‑France, Ed. Hatje Cantz.
ARLES 2019 , Les Rencontres de la photographie, ed. ACTES SUD, Arles.
Pictures for a while , Entretien avec Erick Gudimard, Centre Photographique Marseille.
Framed Landscapes , European Photography Commissions 1984–2019, ICO Fundacion, Madrid.
art press 469 , Jean-Louis Garnell, Texte Anne Bertrand.
50 ans de photographie française — De 1970 à nos jours , Michel Poivert, ed. Textuel.
Photo-graphier le chantier , sous la direction de Jordi Ballesta, Anne-Céline Callens, ed. Hermann.

2018

2017

PAYSAGES FRANÇAIS , Une aventure photographique 1984–2017, Raphaële Bertho, Héloïse Conésa, BnF Editions, Paris.
La Fabrique photographique des paysages , Monique Sicard, Aurèle Crasson, Gabrielle Andries, ed Hermann, Paris.
ARLES 2017 , Les Rencontres de la photographie, ed ACTES SUD, Arles.
LA FRANCE EN ALBUMS (XIXe–XXe Siècles) , Philippe Antoine, Danièle Méaux, Jean-Pierre Montier, ed Hermann, Paris.
La collection photographique du Musée de La Roche-sur-Yon 1983–2016 , ed. Liénard, Paris.

2016

JEAN-LOUIS GARNELL , Textes Rosanna Albertini, Hubertus von Amelunxen, Brice Matthieussent, Roberta Valtorta, Lars-Erik Hjertström-Lappalainen, ed Centre photographique de Marseille, Marseille.

2015

Une histoire. Art Architecture Design. Des années 1980 à nos jours , Texte Christine Macel, Centre Pompidou, Paris.
Qu’est-ce que la photographie? , Clément Chéroux, Karolina Ziebinska-Lewandowska, Centre Pompidou-Xavier Barral, Paris.
Pratiques , Les cahiers de la médecine utopique N69, Paris.
VOICES OF PHOTOGRAPHY N15 , Taiwan.
Géo-Photographies , Danièle Méaux, Filigranes Editions.
Landschaft. Umwelt. Kultur. Gisela Parak , Museum für Photographie, Braunschweig.
INVENTARIO N11 , Corraini Edizione, Mantova.

2014

2004–2014 Opere e progetti del Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea , ed Silvana Editoriale, Milan.
Etudes photographiques N31, ed Société Française de Photographie, Paris.
La Mission photographique de la DATAR , Nouvelles perspectives critiques, La Documentation Française, Paris.

2013

This infinite world / Diese unendliche Welt , Paul Graham, ed Fotomuseum Winterthur.
Des images comme des oiseaux , Patrick Tosani, Pierre giner, ed CNAP et éditions LOCO, Paris.
La Mission photographique de la DATAR , un laboratoire du paysage contemporain, Raphaële Berto, La Documentation Française, Paris.
Urbi et Orbi , 6ème Biennale de la photographie et de la ville, Sedan.

2012

NARRATIVES AND NARRATIVE FORM , Duan Yuting, François Cheval, LIANZHOU FOTO 2012, Chine.

2011

Industrieszeit. Fotografien 1845–2010 , textes Ulrich Pohlmann, Rudolf Scheutle, ed Wasmuth, Tübingen-Berlin.

2010

PICTO , 1950–2010, Voir avec le regard de l’autre, Actes Sud, Arles.
Paysages sensibles , Mucem, Marseille.
Rendez vous à Shanghai , ed. ESBAM, Marseille.

2009

il museo , le collezioni #2, Museo Fotografia Contemporanea cinisello-Balsamo, Silvana Editoriale, Milan.

2008

Neue Kunst in den neuen Kammern! , Ellen Kobe, Marvin Altner, ed. Jovis, Berlin.
“regarde de tous tes yeux , regarde", L’art contemporain de Georges Perec, ed. Joseph K. Musées de Beaux-Arts de Nantes et Dole.
Fotografia astratta dalle avanguardie al digitale , ed. Marsilio, Venise.
Storie immaginate in luoghi reali, DVD, Museo Fotografia Contemporanea, Milan.
L’oeuvre photographique de Jean-Louis Garnell , Laetitia Chazottes, Master Université Panthéon-Sorbonne.

2007

Collection Art contemporain , Musée national d’Art Moderne, ed. Centre Pompidou, Paris.
Fotografia europea , Elio Grazioli, ed. Damiani, Bologne.
La Force de l’Art , Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris.
L’art de la photographie de 1939 à nos jours, André Gunthert, Michel Poivert, Citadelles et Mazenod.

2006

TIEFENSCHÄRFE , Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Wienand Verlag.
Inventaire des collections du Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris , ed. Paris musées.
Les peintres de la vie moderne , ed. Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
Identification d’une ville, Dominique Baqué, ed. Du Regard.

2005

Par le noir , Centre de photographie de Lectoure.

2004

Feu rouge, à propos de: Par le noir, Rosanna Albertini.
Photographie plasticienne , l’extrême contemporain, Dominique Baqué, Editions du Regard.
Im Rausch der Dinge , Thomas Seelig, Urs Stahel, ed. Steidl.

2003

Yet untitled , Sammlung Bernd Künne, ed. Hatje Cantz.
Jean-Louis Garnell , texte: Anne Bertrand, ed. Artothèque Angers.

2001

Jean-Louis garnell , cat, ed. Verlag das Wunderhorn, textes Uta Nusser.
Connivence 2001 , Biennale de Lyon, ed. RMN Lyon.

2000

L’invitation à la ville, cat, ed Bruxelles 2000, texte: Jean-Marc Huitorel.
Identificazione di un paesaggio , Venezia-Marghera, textes: Paolo Costantini, Thomas Weski, Silvana Editoriale.

1999

Modules, Images 1997, cdrom, ed. UTC Compiègne, texte: Monique Sicard.

1998

La Photographie plasticienne , ed. Du Regard Paris, texte: Dominique Baqué.
Premises , cat, ed. Guggenheim Museum New York.

1997

Les lieux du non-Lieu , cat, ed. Verlag der Kunst Berlin, textes: Hubertus Von Amelunxen, etc…
Another & another & another act of seeing (urban space) , cat, ed. DeSingel Anvers, divers textes.
The 90s: A Family of Man? , cat, ed. Café-Crême Luxembourg, divers textes.
Fos, natures d’un lieu, cat, ed. images en Manoeuvre Marseille, texte: Bernard Lamarche-Vadel.

1996

Prospect 96 , cat, ed. Stemmle AG, zürich, texte: Peter Weiermair.
Los limites de la fotografia , cat, ed. AFAA Paris, Texte: André Rouillé.

1995

Mai de la Photo 95 , cat, ed. ville de Reims, André Rouillé et divers textes.
Jean louis Garnell , Werke 1985–95, cat, ed. Fotomuseum Winterthur - Scalo, texte: Urs Stahel.
Collection , fin XXème, cat, ed. FRAC Poitou-Charentes, texte Blandine Chavanne.
Paysages , lieux et non-lieux, cat, ed. Café-Crême Luxembourg, divers textes

1993

Photographie d’une collection , cat, Caisse des Dépôts, ed. Hazan.
Quinze artistes dans le métro , cat, ed. MT Développement Toulouse, texte: Pierre Rey.

1992

Garnell , cat, ed. Stadtwerke Sarrebrück, texte: Bernd Schulz
Les pictographes , cahier de L’Abbaye Sainte-Croix N°71, divers textes.

1991

Kunst , Europa 1991, cat, ed. ADKV.
Garnell , cat, ed. Musée de La Roche-Sur-Yon, texte: Doris Von Drateln.
Cataloghi, L’Unita, 04/11/91, Rosanna Albertini.

1990

Passages de l’image ,Passages de l’image, cat, ed. Centre Pompidou, Paris, texte: S. Roumette.

1989

Une autre objectivité , ed. Idea Books, Milan, texte: J-F Chevrier; entretien avec Giovanna Minelli.
Transmanche 88 , ed. La Différence, Paris.
“Les frontières de la description” , J-F Chevrier, Galeries Magazine décembre/Janvier.
Paysages , Photographies, Mission Photographique de la Datar, ed. Hazan, pp 305–336, divers textes.
Photo-kunst , cat , Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, texte: J-F Chevrier.
Jean Louis Garnell, cat, Galerie Antoine Candau.

1988

Garnell , cat, Centre d’art contemporain, Toulouse.
Another Objectivity , cat, ICA, Londres, texte: J-F Chevrier et James Lingwood.
“Le regard pensif”, Régis Durand, ed. La Différence, pp80 à 85.

1987

L’oubli du paysage , Régis Durand, Art Press N°113.

1985

Paysages Photographies , ed. Hazan, Paris.
La ciutad fantasma , cat, Fondation Miro, Barcelone.

Désordres #10

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Une chambre sans ordre, ni tout à fait oscura ni tout à fait lumineuse. Tandis qu’il suit les lignes régulières du parquet pour entrer dans la pièce et remonter à la source invisible de lumière, devinée dans la fenêtre absente, le regard s’accroche au fatras des choses, erre comme en une caverne où filtre un soleil timide et hors d’atteinte. Un chemin se dessine entre le cadre et les bottes, mais passés ces obstacles, il est sans issue, et le fond la pièce se noie dans un brouillis de formes. C’est un espace confus, on se perdrait sur place, n’étaient quelques îlots précaires pour seule géographie : mégots rassemblés, bottes à proximité qui ne forment plus tout à fait leur paire, un tas de vêtements au bord de l’effondrement. L’entropie du quotidien dissipe les fonctions et les formes sans les annuler tout à fait : vêtements en chiffons, fauteuil encombré, bouteille dans l’absurdité de son vide.

Désordres 1987-1988

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Les raisons pour lesquelles la critique photographique n’apprécie pas le désordre sont diverses. Cette grande conspiration contre l’évidence de la confusion des objets est particulièrement sensible dans les pays qui ont fait de la raison l’horizon de toute pensée. Depuis les années 1930, on privilégie la ligne, les obliques, la géométrie. C’est un regard mathématique qui s’est imposé. Et pour quelques uns qui ont su entrevoir une architecture véritable du monde, combien de descriptions fausses, à tout dire, littéraires . On a fait de la sécheresse, de l’épure , un dogme ; pas d’abondance, pas de sensation et surtout pas d’anecdote . Or, à l’ère du moderne, on n’a pas encore franchi le seuil de quelque appartement, que déjà se signale notre inféodation à la marchandise, à la classification et à la discipline. L’ordre nait du combat contre le sentiment de la nature, du laisser-aller et du bien-être de la paresse. On est pris par l’odeur du propre, faites d’odeurs trop élaborées. On tente de nous faire croire que chaque chose a trouvé sa place dans une composition que la peinture envierait. Misère de la critique que de préférer l’art à la vie, l’idée aux sentiments. Les désordres de Jean-Louis Garnell, eux, ne décrivent rien. Ils constatent et s’amusent de ce refus ontologique. Et, si parfois, des personnages s’insèrent dans cette confusion, la sociologie n’est pas le noeud de l’affaire. L’harmonie, la vie historique des objets, la décoration se déconnectent de l’organisateur de ces arrangements. Les objets ne sont ni laids, ni beaux et prennent un malin plaisir à refuser la place qui leur est impartie habituellement. Il ne reste qu’un magma, un jeu de mikado, que, nous spectateurs, devons déplacer et retourner pour retrouver des traces, des odeurs et des souvenirs ensevelis.

L'esprit du temps

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Il n’y a pas si longtemps, Jean-Louis Garnell composait un Triptyque (2007) bleuté, musical, estival, entre-deux. Dans un parc en Allemagne, c’étaient, l’année d’après, deux Enlèvements (2008), qui manifestaient sous un jour violent, dans un sous-bois sombre, acide, l’ambiguïté de l’élan, emportement, ravissement. Il est le même qui autrefois agençait des Suites, Découpes ; déployait ce qui avait Commencé en hiver, advenait Par le noir ; ou constituait cet univers en soi, Morimondo. Le même qui, sans cesser de penser que parfois « Une image ne suffit pas », mais en appelle d’autres (ce qu’il enseigne), aujourd’hui choisit de montrer de nouvelles images singulières. Dont il n’est pas interdit de penser que, autonomes, elles peuvent pourtant former, à l’occasion, un ensemble. Ce printemps.

Red Fire

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Jean-Louis Garnell

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I. Chez Jean-Louis Garnell, tout commence avec les Désordres de la fin des années 1980. Ces images montrent, en l’état, les intérieurs contemporains d’hommes et de femmes ordinaires, tels qu’ils y vivent, dans un chaos d’objets d’usage, de mobilier et vêtements, nourriture, produits de consommation, avant tout rangement. Anarchie familière dont on sait l’envahissement, spectacle que nous connaissons tous, mais d’habitude gardons pour nous, cachons aux yeux d’autrui, n’exposons pas, qui nous regarde seuls. Ces Désordres, apocalypses domestiques jour après jour résorbées, secrètes, nous rattrapaient. Quelle en était l’intention ? Je ne sais. Montrer cela, qui ne l’avait pas encore été. Choisir de ne pas offrir du quotidien une image policée, mais plutôt le contraire de l’idéal luxe, calme et volupté. Pourtant, sans mise en scène, chaque photographie révélait une composition magistrale, et avec elle une beauté nouvelle. Les Désordres contenaient tout en réserve.

Moments

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Toulouse

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Toulouse

At the end of 1983, I purchased my first 4x5" camera and, after a few attempts, decided to work in colour, abandoning the black and white I used for the photographs I had taken up until then. I explored the city of Toulouse and its surroundings, resulting in this set of 46 photographs.

Landscapes 1985-1986

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1985, 31 years old, my first photographs as a photographer, any other activity, courses in adult education, is abandoned. I join the second year the team of photographers constituted for this commission of the Photographic Mission of the DATAR. A first three-month contract: to take photographs in the industrial areas of Albi-Carmaux and Decazeville, then in Lyon and its suburbs. The following year a subject that I propose, landscapes in transformation, six months contract. A car, the 4x5 camera, France as a field of exploration. Total commitment, founding encounters with artists. These places in transformation, what they were tends to be forgotten, what they will become is not yet very clear, for a short time they float in a certain indecision.

Disorders

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As a following of the changing landscapes, my interest is once again focused on what has not become fixed in form or immutable, these disorders. Interiors, where the fixed structure, architecture, furniture layout, is kept at a distance, is contested by objects, things, clothes placed here or there, without any desire for composition. I note these states. Photographic writing has meant that many times I have been asked if these photographs were not staged. When you make a photograph, you carry out a process of recomposition in real time. And that’s what gives the impression of a possible staging. The way of dealing with colours also contributes to this feeling of being faced with a recomposition.

The Veranda

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Small extension of the Disorders series, these nine photographs constitute a single work.

Portraits

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At night, under a street lighting lamp, a stool faces a photographic large format camera on a tripod, slightly overhanging. A person sits facing the camera. I press the shutter release, the exposure will last about two minutes, I walk while listening to the sounds of the city. It is not strictly speaking a portrait, each person is going to give his or her photograph to the camera, which will record it on the negative. No psychology, an anonymous portrait, the long explosure time makes the characteristics fade away, clothes, facial features, remains the so intense gaze staring at the lens, the pupil records the movements of the head due to the light point of the lamp reflection.

Nights

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Exploring an extreme, will photography then disappear to make way for painting? What’s the minimum left to take a photograph? The answer here is an illuminated ground, which stretches from our feet to the distant dark where we can disappear. The Outside, the Night. Then everything opened up with views of the sea, all subjects became possible, the notion of series disappeared, the images became singular before starting to assemble into diptychs, triptychs and other pieces.

Moving

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Just before leaving Toulouse, while preparing for the move, I invited friends to take one last photograph in the apartment.

Transmanche

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Commission following the DATAR Photographic Mission. Another transformation of the territory. I chose to work on the tunnel construction site, the interior being almost inaccessible for work with a tool such as the large format camera. I am first interested in the objects scattered on the open-air site, then in the workers, and finally by the sea. From a distance, while I am a resident at the Chartreuse in Villeneuve-lez-Avignon, I realise that this very specific and extraordinary building site, the construction of the famous Channel Tunnel, escapes the photographs. So I conceived this series of diptychs, each one integrating a view of the sea, figures corresponding to the data of the project engraved on the glass, superimposed on the sea view, and two workers working nearby. In the catalogue, I write down the stages of the process that led me to conceive these pieces.

Labruguière

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Period when the pictures start to group together, I make the first diptychs and triptychs. I have just moved from Toulouse to Paris, to do the work on the Channel Tunnel site, to make the series of night portraits. I intertwine all these elements. Photography of young boys in Labruguière, indistinct girl in Paris, pictures of art, of the north, of the Parisian place of life. An enigmatic story, between description and meditation. The various pieces are installed on the walls of the college, some were moved years later, and some lost photographs have been replaced recently.

Commonplace

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In anticipation of a development project for the area surrounding the Pont du Gard tourist site, a commission was placed with a dozen photographers. Although the term ‘overtourism’ had not yet been coined, the need to regulate traffic around the site was already apparent. The works will be shown in the exhibition Vues du pont (Views of the Bridge), accompanied by a catalogue.

Pictures

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Small pieces

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Each one came to me from a question raised by the possibilities, or lacks, or limits of photographic representation.

Composite pieces

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Combining multiple photographs to make a work of art starts with two. The pictures must not be so perfect that they are self-sufficient. So I had to learn to make them in such a way that they can be associated with each other as much by what they show and their colors as by what they lack. A kind of silent writing is deciphered by the eye of the viewer.

Saarbrücken suite

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Commissioned by the Stadtwerke Saarbrücken, the region’s energy supplier, on the initiative of Kasper König. The subject: a thermal power station including four in situ commissions to artists. The photographic commission comes in a second step. I live alone in a water tower, necessarily on a hilltop with a view of the industrial landscape, in the first lodge to contemplate the storms. I mix the different components related to this commission and I constitute a set of 24 photographs, a meditation on my presence in these places devoted to the production of electricity.

The catalogues

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Catalogues - 1991

I collect art catalogues with anonymous covers, if possible, and photograph them with a 4x5" view camera. The piece consists of 60 photographs. For the installation, the frames are turned against the wall, one of them is taken and hung at the top left, the line of 15 is continued, the next one is taken, and the last one is placed in the bottom right corner. Each time it is presented, the piece will be different. The feeling for the photographer of coming after the presence of humans, the construction of cities, the production of objects, the manufacture of clothing, the creation of works of art.

Right here

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A period, corresponding to the birth of our first child and then a move, when the camera rarely left the flat. I started to compose theese Suites of 5 photographs, no more, feeling that to percieve them as a single piece became too difficult with a larger number of pictures. It is not a diary of our life, it is a use of what is close to talk about the passage from life to work. The moment of taking the photograph is the tipping point of the moment of life in the time of the work, if at least this photograph later becomes part of the work. The photographer experiences this melancholic vertigo at each release, the tipping point of the present moment in the future time. These Suites write about this situation. The composition of each of them establishes links between the subjects, the colours, the sizes of the photographs, to make it autonomous and perceptible at first glance as a whole and not as a series of independent pictures. This reading, which became obvious about ten years after their creation, was not at all evident in their first exhibition.

Jolimont

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A commission to 15 artists, one work for each station of Toulouse’s first metro line. The Jolimont station comes out of a hill, it is in the open air. The work must be in relation to the glass openings. I respond to this request thinking that the vision through the windows must not be obscured, each passenger getting off the train must be able to find their way immediately, see the weather. Moreover, no photograph seems to me to be able to withstand the daily glances of tens of thousands of passengers without wearing out. I decide to place coloured glass in the space of the double windows, a sort of large pieces of a vanished image, of which only these fragments would remain, and whose shapes are similar to parts of stained glass windows. One coloured glass in each window. I program a computer, following rules that I set, but I also introduce randomness. With each click, it suggests a composition for a group of windows. If I like it, I print it out. Then I combine these choices to decide on the shapes and sizes of glass for each window. I choose the colours. 16 windows per platform, plus the two large rosettes, plus the two windows in the ticket hall. The glasses are made at Saint-Gobain, a bonding of two sheets of coloured glass, then a cut with a pressurised water jet is made according to the drawings. By day the glass is visible from the inside and by night it is visible from the outside. I was also asked to draw the two grids that close the accesses to the platform at the end of the station.

From museum to museum

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:35:36 +0000

Commission during the renovation of the first wing of the Saint-Pierre Museum in Lyon. Several states of this transformation are captured in sets of photographs, from the old to the new. Then are added a few photographs taken outside the museum, yellow of the forsythias in spring and a mother with a child. A piece is then written, including an exhibition device, a structure made for the occasion, an interior where the photographs taken outside the museum are shown, and an exterior where those taken inside the museum are visible.

Fos

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:37:02 +0000

Commission, photograph the territory of the commune of Fos-sur-mer. Nature, industry, habitat. Several diptychs, including one with a man, neither a fisherman nor an inhabitant, his relationship with this place is poetic. The diptych, with its shifting points of view, recomposes a landscape that does not exist in reality.

Days

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:37:32 +0000

First opportunity to make digital photographs when I am lent an Apple Quicktake, 350.000 pixels, I think I remember it. As I had worked exclusively the previous fifteen years with a 4x5 camera, the change was extreme. So I was looking for images I could do well with this camera. Pictures in the house in the first place. Then I start to paint them, an elementary gesture with photoshop. A colour chosen for each photograph, it comes into tension with the residual skeleton coming from the photograph, and drawn by the strongly enlarged pixels. The photographic snapshot changes in nature by being partly covered by colour, and time makes its appearance, like days and actions that are repeated. It seems to me then to be somewhat primitive to digital photography.

Modules Images

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:37:54 +0000

A collaborative project with researchers from the Université Technologique de Compiègne. I decide to visit their computers to collect the images used to report on their experiments. Pell-mell, scanners, MRI, electron microscope, 3D, photos, diagrams, drawings, etc… I then reappropriate them, I make my own images to give an account of this effort to decode reality. I work in reverse, I recreate complexity, I mix these images to make them more and more incomprehensible. The last ones, called Images, consist of large grey rectangles floating on a white space, where in rare places the work of decoding has begun, which is disputed to erase. Between knowledge and loss, the process of research.

Porto Marghera

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:38:32 +0000

A commission in which I find the Americans, Sephen Shore, Lewis Baltz, john Gossage, Frank Gohlke, Anthony Hernandez, Richard Pare, and also John Davies. A certain emotion. Today, artists are no longer invited to paint works for prestigious places, they are asked to frequent and work in places of industrial decline. What they had begun to do with themselves, on the other hand. No authorisations, the public space, the freest one suits me. Several landscapes recomposed from photographs taken in different places and a diptych with a child. In this space where men have destroyed all beauty, the water is oily, the waste is scattered in the thin grass, the air smells of industrial dust, the sounds of scrap metal dumped on a quay assault, the child takes a piece of brick and draws a boat on a stone. He has the resource to create a world for himself, in a place where we are annihilated.

Simples

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:39:08 +0000

A commission originally for a work installed in Pau in an engineering school for industrial processes. After all, they are working for us, even against us, if we think of all these molecules that have come to encumber the space of industrial production in recent decades. But what can photography do, just flirt with the surfaces of uncertain bodies, with invisible chemistries. At the time of the so-called mad cow crisis, it is not photography that can tell us whether or not there are prions in our meat. I explore the house, like all houses, they put our bodies in contact with materials, which touch our skins, which we breathe, eat, or simply look at. I decompose into simple elements this close universe, one material per image, and I recompose small sets that reconstitute a sometimes enigmatic environment. These simple elements surround us in the exhibition room. And in the school, I set up a few sets in the hope that these future engineers will ask themselves some questions about what will happen to the products that will come out of their industrial processes and with which they themselves will be individually confronted afterwards.

Phénomènes

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:39:46 +0000

Exploration of a French-style park, laid out, maintained, symmetrical. In rare places, something escapes this human control. In these few phenomena.

Apple Peels

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:40:16 +0000

The children are still small, I peel the reinette apples for the whole family, the plate of peels pleases me and with an Olympus Camédia 1.2M pixels, the top of the technique, I photograph it a little later on the balcony, in the sunlight. I repeat the operation, other days, other apples, other peels. From this material, I start to take parts of it, to stick them one on top of the other, to mix them in different ways. Then I select a square fragment that will be used as the basis for the copy-paste-mirror process, resulting in images measuring 120x120 cm. A main motif will appear 9 times. I think that the square with the 9 patterns allows the result to be an image with a certain fence and not a carpet. A man locks himself in with his computer to produce this series, the world disappears. The most organic, our food, at least what is left of it, here the peelings, becomes a digital surface, a new computer- generated skin that carries the memory of its organic matter, Apple Peels.

Flow I

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:41:22 +0000

For almost four years, I collected the photographs that passed through my hands, without doing any specific research. They came from different sources, some of them I took, others I found in newspapers or magazines, invitation cards received or collected during exhibition visits, various cards, which I assembled and then glued together on large pages. I kept this kind of image journal, a shaping of the flow of images that has gone through life during these years.

Pages

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:42:00 +0000

Continuation of the exploration of the house at first, the children are young, and constitution of a set of images. Assemblages of these photographs in collages that will constitute a kind of diary of a life, that of our family. She lives there. Then comes the search for the surface of computer code taken from the computer’s memory, an image of what is present, but indecipherable unless we have the codes, the instruments, the necessary knowledge. The image of everything that surrounds us, crosses us, the waves of the universe, telephones, televisions, radios. The site of a life in the world. Visible and invisible coexist in these two juxtaposed pages.

Yellow Roses

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:44:24 +0000

Derives from two yellow roses protruding from a garden and picked. I photograph them, and a work of fusions, collages, juxtapositions of petal material follows. Two series result from this. In the first one, a surface is composed from a square fragment, according to a process similar to the one that gave birth to the Apple Peels. In the other one, improbable flower hybrids are created.

Mutations

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:46:00 +0000

A project in Bordeaux for an eponymous exhibition at the CAPC. Re-exploration of a territory, the city and its surroundings, a quest for images of points of fracture and transformation. But the word Mutations, which I keep as the title of this series, is very exaggerated. Rem Koolhaas talks about Chen Zen, Lagos, Rio, where the word does have a meaning, but here in Bordeaux, it’s rather ironic.

Cutouts

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:46:40 +0000

I buy a Nikon Coolpix, 3M pixels, and everything can be photographed, in any position, it doesn’t cost anything, and the images accumulate in the computers’ memories. What interests me is to talk about this fluidity. I then begin a series of digital collages based on this photographic material, seeking to retranscribe moments that have existed. Knowing that they are only passages, constantly changing balances. The cuts have both the solidity of a finished form and the fragility of an improbable assemblage. Each one is a simple transition point in the great future.

NBC

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:47:04 +0000

An exploration at the feet of the plants in a garden, the earth, the emergence of stems, the wilted leaves. But these colour photographs will not satisfy me. I desaturate a strip, they are now in black and white and in colour, so it’s right.

The Survivors

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:47:38 +0000

During the Christmas vacations in the family house in Brittany, my mother shows me a basket containing a whole selection of toys from our childhood, which she thinks are good to throw away because they are all more or less damaged, broken. But as she wouldn’t throw anything away without asking us, they have survived to this day. I decide to photograph them. I improvise a mini-studio in the open air on the terrace in front of the room and I photograph this collection of objects on a white background. I find a few others who come to join the group, 120 in total. I am conscious of saving them by photographing them, they become survivors, and since the whole thing enters the BNF collections after the exhibition, it worked well. A survival of forgotten objects that belonged to the plastic generation of the early 1960s suddenly find themselves before our eyes.

Par le noir

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:48:14 +0000

Piece consisting of 15 photographs. Life time passing through the dark. The one, the two, the three. Is the photographic surface sufficient to record everything that happens inside us?

The end of the table

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:49:16 +0000

One day, I realise that the photographs taken in this area of the kitchen, the table pushed against the white wall and on which objects are placed, are accumulating in the computer. It is the place where various objects, lamps, candlesticks, flowers, plants taken during walks, fruits… are arranged according to the days, the gestures of one or the other. And this scene at the end of the table meets the often strong and direct light of the great sun, which passes through the nearby window. This meeting of the objects of a life, with this essential light, is the subject of these photographs. When we rearrange the kitchen, the table is lifted from the wall, no more end of the table, the series is completed.

Begun in winter

Thu, 21 Sep 2023 15:28:02 +0000

Started without my noticing it, a series of photographs will grow and then be arranged to become this piece in four parts of 16 photographs each. Meticulous attention is paid to the relationship between light, objects, the things closest to us, in our living space. The four sets correspond to the seasons, from the intimate connection of shadows and objects in the weak light of winter mornings, to the more colourful light of autumn, through its rise in spring, the colours appear more distinctly, summer is characterised by the intensity of contrasts, the vividness of colours and the strength of the call of the outside world.

Staircase B

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:51:10 +0000

Commission for the European Photography Week in Reggio-Emilia. Theme: Europe and its mixed populations.

A very short deadline for the realisation. We noticed that in our staircase, several nationalities were present. With a large format camera, I photograph the groups of inhabitants in their living rooms, plus a view of the staircase. Except that no one is photographed at home. As a trap, the photographs are analysed, the couple of decor - inhabitants on presuppositions. And the interpretations are often wrong.

Morimondo

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:51:40 +0000

A two-week stay on the outskirts of Milan in a small village surrounding a Cistercian abbey founded in 1135 by St. Bernard on his return from Rome. Deserted today by its monks. Photographs taken day after day, a daily selection in the small room of the hotel which adjoins the abbey which is being renovated, result in this piece composed of 7 photographs. I call it Morimondo 2007, after the name of the village. It speaks of the experience of a man today, meditating on time, out of the world and its invading objects. The spirit of a contemporary monk.

Kidnappings

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:52:04 +0000

A group exhibition at Neue Kammern Castle in the park of SansSouci in Potsdam, to carry out works related to the place. In the park, statues representing mythological kidnappings call out to me. Shivers of desire-violence in the royal alleys of a park under surveillance. Far from the contemporary iconography of kidnapping, rapes, confinement in cellars, crimes, sordid miscellaneous events. The desire to make contemporary images of this amorous struggle, of this yes-no.

Triptychs

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:53:00 +0000

Compositions

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:53:58 +0000

For a few days, on the way between the apartment and the studio, I collect things that have fallen, been thrown away, broken. They pile up in the bag that I hold in my hand. When I arrive to the studio, I unpack and begin the photographic process. On a neutral background on the window sill, I place one element, take one photograph, add another, new photograph, and so on, until I decide to stop, and sometimes to start again. Finally, I throw away the day’s crop. Doing with nothing, without money, without traveling in search of the extraordinary, right here, things thrown away, found, a mixture of nature and industry. Redeemed.

Pictures 2010

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:55:12 +0000

A free selection of recent images.

Cortona

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:55:38 +0000

A suite consists of 5 photographs taken in the city of Cortona in Tuscany, very marked by the presence of churches and cloisters. The vertical and the oblique answer each other in the images with strong contrasts of light.

Triptychs

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:56:44 +0000

The entanglement of glass forms, lights, shadows and colors disrupt the perception of a natural photographic perspective.

Diptychs 1972-1975

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:57:26 +0000

During one of my last stays in the family home, I found the boxes of photographs I was making and shooting in a small lab in the basement. Preserved since the beginning of the 70s, they contain prints bearing their age and revealing my first tests. It is the set concerning situations related to music that caught my attention. I made these collages from the prints I found, and each of them is linked to a particular circumstance that is associated with a record. There is a contrast between the amateurism of the photographer and the musicians, and the professionalism, the celebrity of the records and the musicians facing each other in each diptych.

Screens

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:59:36 +0000

I took a blank sheet of watercolor paper similar to the ones I used this summer for the series of drawings made during the stay in the cabin by the lake. I placed this sheet in the northern nature, often near trees lying in the wind and I photographed it by choosing very precisely the shadow drawing while keeping around it a frame made of various components of the surrounding nature. This surface that reveals is also a screen that hides a certain amount of nature. The sheet collects the shadow drawing, the photograph collects the whole. These two collections are present in each photograph, facing each other.

Suites 2017 - 2019

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:00:54 +0000

A first Suite was composed step by step in 2017, associating 6 vertical photographs of different subjects, compositions, colors. I then followed this rule, making a work with 6 vertical photographs, one each year. The resonances weave freely between the images so different. A singular climate gathers them in each of these suites.

Under the lamp

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:04:16 +0000

Under lamps I made, I placed selected objects, each one related to a close person.

Spectres

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:04:50 +0000

When I go to the doctor, I see a face on the floor. I took a photograph with my cell phone. It stayed in my mind and I wanted to continue exploring. I walked in the parks around as soon as the April sun was strong and I searched for those faces that appeared and disappeared on the ground. And sometimes in extremely fleeting moments, since sometimes the face was only visible when the wind made the leaves move. I walk, I search, I still don’t know what the final piece will look like. When selecting the images, I choose those that show faces with a pronounced human character. The piece also includes a photograph of a rose and becomes a version of an Et in Arcadia ego, except that the myth of a blessed time in that ideal country that Arcadia would represent is far removed from me.

Landscapes

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:05:22 +0000

These fictional landscapes convey the beautiful and disturbing impression of a land without plants, humans, a mineral desert or a gaseous state, making one think of the beginning or the end of the world.

Flow II

Wed, 25 Jan 2023 11:07:52 +0000

Invitation cards received and accumulated over the years are assembled to form this 29 metres long piece; a fragment of it is shown here.

Unseen views

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:06:36 +0000

In the spring of 2020, we are living the unprecedented experience of a confinement. One hour out of the house is allowed every day within a one kilometre radius, remaining 23 hours in the flat. I often look out of the window at the few isolated passers-by, at the families carefully grouped together on their daily outings, and then I start to photograph them. Later on, I have the idea of making a series of photographs over a given period of time, I stand at the window, determine the precise frame of the shots, and photograph every passer-by, cyclist, group, one click for each. With this basic material I start a montage. I take fragments containing the passers-by, and then transfer them to exactly the same place in the final montage. In this way I compose a scene that never took place. I recreate a collective that has completely disappeared from our lives during this confinement. But in each final image, you can feel the solitude of the characters, the others do not exist, each one remains in his own world. An impression of strangeness seizes us in front of this choreography so precisely arranged. The tree continues its development in the cycle of the seasons, indifferent to this human agitation.

Stumps

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:07:52 +0000

The various states of the stumps photographed say very crudely, in a rather expressionist way, the violent relationship that men have with nature. They cut the trees to use the wood, to prevent a danger of falling in parks and streets, or to appropriate the space where they had settled and lived for many years. Each of these stumps is captured in a specific time of its becoming, it addresses us its silent cry. Here stood a tree, here lies the stump. A circumstantial metaphorical meaning can also appear, we have become stumps in this time of pandemic, the world has been partly taken away from us, the others, the elsewhere, and we are left with the base in a well circumscribed and limited here in which we must survive, and act, and produce new forms. Sessile beings that must imperatively deal with it if they want to continue to live.

iMz9T

Fri, 03 Mar 2023 11:41:28 +0000

Under this code name are revealed 11 unknown images, which have just been completed in a secret laboratory. Even if you look at them carefully, their origin is so uncertain that it is almost impossible to know how they were made. They are there rather soft in their presence. The materials that constitute them remain impossible to define, are they natural but of what nature would we speak then? Or results of sophisticated combinations of industrial chemistry which would have concocted organic and synthetic fabrics as precise as improbable? They cannot have been made or painted by hand as the details of the textures are so precise, and their smooth and perfect surface confesses a certain technical origin. One could make the hypothesis that they are photographs, but what would be the origin necessarily in the real world for any photograph? Or to think that they are synthetic images, totally made by computer, but then this precision of the matters would dissuade us again, no it is not possible. Then remains a last possibility, they would be all that at the same time, an intimate fusion of real materiality and digital processes. Living and dead, animal and artificial, found and manufactured, their ambivalence resists any classification. These are resolutely contemporary images, stemming from our reality combining the organic of the world we live in and the virtuality of the ever more invasive digital. We are in front of them facing a dilemma that we cannot decide, invited to share their mystery, which is also that of our present life.

Falls

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:15:44 +0000

I look at the selection of photographs of leaves on the ground made in recent days. A dispersion according to the circumstances, democratic, each element has its place and importance in the composition. The perspective is abolished in this frontal plane of the ground, the glance is incited to move continuously from an element to another. As in my drawings or in other series of photographs, I think of the Disorders for example. I am probably collecting here the experience of composition on a sheet of paper. Nature thwarted by the tarmac of men, its miraculous beauty on this non-receptive surface, uniform and sterile in its refusal to integrate the cycle of living degradation of these leaves. Gravity and grace, and the tarmac. Images made in the near environment, no particular displacement, carbon footprint, the obsession of the moment, reduced to subsistence. The world is going badly, the climate crisis, war, famine and all the other misfortunes of this world are reminded to us every day and overwhelm us, however autumn is coming, the leaves are falling, I eat, I live, I spend time looking for these images that I select with great care. Derisory? Wozu Dichter in dürftiger Zeit?

Diptych #1

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:06:36 +0000

Suites 2020 - 2023

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:16:20 +0000

Stained glass windows for Notre-Dame

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:16:20 +0000

When the commission for contemporary stained glass windows for Notre-Dame de Paris was announced at the beginning of December 2023, I made theese sketches.

Street Broken Mirror Self Portrait

Fri, 03 Mar 2023 11:41:28 +0000

I take a picture every time I found a broken mirror in the street.

Drawings 1993

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 09:09:54 +0000

During my residency at the Akademie Solitude in Stuttgart in 1990–1991, I began drawing in sketchbooks. Back in my studio, I set up a drawing table near the window and continued drawing, while pursuing my main activity, which remained photography.

Drawings 1995

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 09:09:54 +0000

Paintings 2013-2014

Mon, 09 Jan 2023 10:38:56 +0000

A constrained space—the surface of the canvas—holds a liquid material. I seek the point of tension between these two parameters, the frame and the flow. Each new circumstance brings its own differences.

Drawings 2014

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 09:09:54 +0000

Drawings 2015

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 09:09:54 +0000

Triptychs 2015

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 09:09:54 +0000

Drawings 2017

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 09:09:54 +0000

Drawings 2018

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:02:32 +0000

For almost five years now, I have been practising drawing on a regular basis. They are dated, carefully archived, several hundred of them today. Drawings are physical phenomena that take place on the sheet of paper, the theatre of operations. Flows, contacts, diffusions, captures, mutual exchanges of material, encounters, oppositions, distances, tensions, fusions. A whole life in action, at an elementary or metaphorical stage. Between the done and the not done, between what is decisions and the uncontrollable consequences of these decisions. Perhaps they are trying to get to the bottom of my thoughts, my feelings, something that lives, a fusional mixture of constraints and freedom, of the random and the necessary. A perpetual exchange of organic and mineral substances which is the essence of life. And us a very short moment in this continuum, the time to do and to leave some traces that express it. The movement is perceptible in these sets of forms and it seems frozen in a fraction of a second, as in a photograph.

Drawings 2019

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:08:20 +0000

Drawings 2020

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:08:20 +0000

Drawings 2021

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:08:20 +0000

Trees

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:02:32 +0000

It started with this shape I spotted in a previous drawing, a kind of human- tree standing leaning, in black and green, it unfolded in very fine subtle lines reminiscent of molds or roots, both downwards and upwards. I started making new ones, on 50x35cm formats, one per sheet. The passage to a larger format changed the relationship to the lines of the original, another energy had to develop. I determined the colors, four for all. The 22 forms are certainly part of the same series, all of them show this human-tree, but each one has its own character which it manifests with more or less vehemence. From the ground rose this trunk, sometimes in two parts, a hollow in the center, almost split, and which arrives after years of life and growth to this state in this present where it is plunged in a great indecision. Can it still grow, simply grow? What will happen now? What possibility of life remains? A great uncertainty hovers on the future of these beings. That of the trees? My own?

Drawings 2022

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:08:20 +0000

Skinless

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:13:54 +0000

Floating forms of improbable organisms still alive but raw, the skin no longer protects them from the outside. Fragile life, threatened, in spite of everything.

Drawings 2023

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:08:20 +0000

Ouns

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:02:32 +0000

Series of 28 drawings, 50x35cm or 35x50cm, watercolour and pigments on paper

A first fragile humanoid character with multiple internal wounds appeared in Brittany during the drawing session on 23 July. A kind of self-portrait, I thought. It remained unique, I framed it and hung it on the wall here for a while. The terrible attack by Hamas on 7 October and the appalling violence of the Israeli response in Gaza reawakened our sense of inner fragility. This was compounded by the ongoing war in Ukraine and various other current conflicts. The characters reappeared in the wake of these events, and the series continued. I kept them all, without selecting any, and arranged them in the order in which they were created. A solitary figure floats in a white space, barely standing, taking a few last steps before collapsing, or caught in the fall, or still a mass on the ground. Sometimes they make demonstrative gestures, calls for help addressed to no one in particular, their limbs may be dislocated, and on all of them, the coloured areas, where red dominates, suggest numerous serious and often fatal injuries. Even if we are not the direct victims of these crimes, we are affected and wounded in our humanity by the terrible violence inflicted on humans by humans. These drawings express and show, between reality and metaphor, the state in which we find ourselves. In utter disarray.

Drawings 2024

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:08:20 +0000

Drawings 2025

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:02:32 +0000

Reduce, he says

One year, the table here, no trips, one or two drawings each day, all in the same format, 36x51cm, rather modest. Photography is an instantaneous snapshot cut in the flow of reality, its surface is always full of the substance of the world transmitted by light. In contrast, the sheet of paper on the table in the morning is immaculate, it will collect an ecology of traces while preserving part of its initial whiteness. A figuration may appear, without any real prior intention. Traces made with brushes combining pieces of wire, strings of various thicknesses, and plant elements taken from the surrounding area, such as handles made from bamboo pruning residues.

Graphite on woods

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:53:28 +0000

On the way from the flat to the studio, I pick up different things, and I begin to take an interest in used pieces of wood, whose original function is not very obvious. I am particularly careful in my choice of dimensions and shapes. After various experiments, I begin to cover the visible surface very completely with graphite. The wood is hidden under this grey layer, which is very sensitive to light reflections. The pieces of wood have a second life, saved in extremis from destruction, probably by fire. They are then hung on the wall, present in their erasure. I think that the gesture of covering the surface with graphite is similar to that of the photographer who unifies all the surfaces of matter present in reality, and which become, in the picture, the surface of photographic paper.

Walls

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:58:36 +0000

I collect things gleaned here and there, chosen for their particular qualities, size, colour, but also silence or enigma. Then begins the work of composition on the wall of the studio, which continues while I make new discoveries. Numerous attempts, elements are removed, added, moved, transformed. An impression of flow, which would have frozen like life in a photograph, is given by these compositions. A meticulous description of all the elements composing each of these 5 Walls accompanies them.

Lamps

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:03:46 +0000

Over the years, I have made these lamps, mainly from found materials which now are light carriers. Many of them illuminate the living space at night, and assert their singular presence during the day. These photographs were taken in the studio in 2017, a portrait of each of these lamps.

0€

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:13:18 +0000

Christian Bérard

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:01:58 +0000

nest N°6 Fall 1999

Eye of the needle, Text Mitchell Owens

Gabhan 0'Keefe

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:01:58 +0000

nest N°7 winter 1999-2000

Splendor in the glass, Text David Plante

Garouste et Bonetti

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:01:58 +0000

nest N°9 Summer 2000

Conjuring the elements with Garouste and Bonetti, Text Joe Holtzman

Jacques Grange

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:01:58 +0000

nest N°8 Spring 2000

Grange à la Grange, Text Paul B. Franklin

La chambre de Proust

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:01:58 +0000

nest N°14 Fall 2001

Proust’s bedroom, Text Lydia davis

Martin Szekely

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:01:58 +0000

nest N°12 Summer 2001

Armchair philosopher, Text Paul B. Franklin

Pierre Pozzi

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:01:58 +0000

nest N°17 Summer 2002

A pad of paper, Text Paul B. Franklin

Souhed Nemlaghi

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:01:58 +0000

nest N°16 Spring 2002

An immacculate conception, Text Carl Skoggard

The Flemish Primitives

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:01:58 +0000

nest N°17 Summer 2002

The Flemish primitives, Texte Lisa Robertson

Ann Huybens

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:01:58 +0000

Fashion designer Ann Huybens selected photographs to create fabric prints for three of her collections presented between 2002 and 2004. Pom Pom - 2002, Under the Blanket - 2003, —– - 2004

Madeleine Isaksson

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:01:58 +0000

I did the pictures for theese three CD.

Landscapes 1985-1986

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:01:58 +0000

At the end of 2016, two exhibition projects initiated by Raphaële Bertho and Héloïse Conésa are planned. They both relate to La Mission photographique de la DATAR, which encourages me to revisit my work of 1985-1986. In general I don’t do this, I think that the choices decided in real time are those that really commit us. But here I make an exception. I revisit the contact sheets, scan hundreds of negatives and begin to arrange the double-pages that will lead to this book project, which is still unpublished. Many aspects of my work are now visible. They complement and broaden the vision that one could have had by looking at the limited set that I had selected as a direct result of the fieldwork, almost 35 years ago now.

Sold

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:01:58 +0000

I am sixty years old, my parents’ house is sold, I buy a new camera, I start this project. A meditation on our life, from all these objects, images, things, archives, which arise when we have to empty a family home. Unpublished.

in here

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:01:58 +0000

Once again, I explore the close. And this had begun long before the lockdown rules imposed on us this year, the first Suites named ici-même - right here date from 1993-1994. It is always with astonishment that new images appear. One might think that habit dulls the gaze and makes one want to travel far away to re-sharpen it. I would tend to think the opposite, it is the very fact itself of not moving that makes any new circumstance so strong, it is hard to believe that it is still possible for this new one to emerge in this so well known continuum. All it takes is a light on that day, at that moment, falling on those things put there, in that singular configuration, to make you want to go and get the camera and take that photograph which will also be unique. I have learned that these precise circumstances will never happen again. In this project, I retain photographs that show precisely the organic link that is established between what is seen and the light. Something very intimate, beyond what is personal and of little importance, is unveiled from this existing in here.

Street Broken Mirror Self Portrait

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:01:58 +0000

Some more projects

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:01:58 +0000

Jean-Louis Garnell

Statement

Curriculum

Jean‑Louis Garnell Werke 1985–95

Jean-Louis Garnell, Recent works

Jean-Louis Garnell

Alive

Par le noir

Par le noir

Staircase B

Jean-Louis Garnell

Pictures for a while

0€

Objets dans l'objectif

La force de l'art

Storie immaginate in luoghi reali

What is photography ?

UNE HISTOIRE. Art, architecture, design, des années 1980 à nos jours

Commissions

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Collections

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Bibliography

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Désordres #10

Désordres 1987-1988

L'esprit du temps

Red Fire

Jean-Louis Garnell

Moments

Toulouse

Landscapes 1985-1986

Disorders

The Veranda

Portraits

Nights

2007

2000

1998

1996–1997

1995

1993

1989

1988

1985–1986

Public Collections

Private Collections

2025

2024

2022

2021

2020

2018

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