The initiation to photography was shaped first of all by my father's practice of it. He was a painter before anything else, but he also had the full photographic equipment: a laboratory and cameras. In parallel of his painting, he used to work as well as a silver-gelatin printer for few artists such as Henri Maccheroni or those represented by the Parisian Enseigne des Oudins, among others. Each of my parents devoted only to their own art practices, art conceptualisations and cats, orientated me in a certain way to build my own practice to make be abble too build a "family bound". The absolutely total boredom of a child facing daily self-centred parents, entangled in the meanders of self-recognition's desire... In a kind of way, here is the genesis in1984 photograph, a photographic black and white suicide, camera against the head, ready to shoot, wish of an "afterlife". This became a part of my existence, to save myself from boredom, solitude, attempting to find through photographic experimentations a possible "someone else" with whom to talk to.
École Supérieure d’art et de design, Le Havre 1992-95
École supérieure des beaux-arts, Le Mans 1995-97
École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie, Arles 1997-2000
In Le Havre, I developed from the very beginning a photographic practice according to sculpture. The notion of "Grotesque" and "Vanities" emerged in my work: hybrid characters, both frightening and ridiculous, composed of objects taken out of home (toys, food, etc.). Some symbolic allegories based on different periods: from the 17th century Dutch and French Vanities (Philippe de Champaigne) to the new realism of Daniel Spoerri, among others. The book "Photography/sculpture" published by the Centre National de la Photographie (1.01.1991) will be at the heart of my research.
From a figurative work, I did experiment a more asbtract path by cuting, installing photographs in 3D conditions, in Le Mans. The book from Georges Bataille "La pointe à l'oeil" orientated the work for more than a year. Cones, squares, installations with fur, mirrors, pigments and plaster dominated the practice. Sculpture and photography were more than ever strongly binded.
This photographic practice was somewhat slowed down when I arrived at the National School of Photography in Arles. Indeed, the idea of photographic experimentation remained relative to a technical practice, without being truly conceptualised. In parallel with certain UFO-photographic-installations, however, it was a work dedicated to self-portraiture that asserted itself: bringing photography back to a more "classic" use, but with a reflection on female representation, which in those "old" times remained ideologically very distant from the concerns of the teaching body, even non-existent. But Francesca Woodman, combined with Urs Luethi, did bring to me a lot...
I started to work as a picture-researcher for the "La Documentation Française" (French documentation). I was in charge of indexing and cataloguing the photographic collection "Afrique francophone", from which the work of photographer Germaine Krull. After a few months this library migrated to a new location, the photographic department was suppressed. I left for Photonica, the Japanese image bank, until 2003, when the agency being bought by Getty-images offered me a new step in life... During this period the project "Family Games" is being started at the rythm of the family week-ends, combined in parallel to Polaroids SX-70 trips, the Rolleiflex takes precedence on the old Lubitel and a digital camera also invites itself in my photographic bag. Jean-Yves Jouannais joined the circle with his book "Idiotie" (2003), but above all "Artiste sans oeuvre" (1997), because in the methodical deconstruction of the family album's strategy of happiness, a slight echo of "enslavement to a strategy of recognition"* begins to be felt.
*Jean-Yves Jouannais - Artistes sans oeuvres, I would prefer not to (Hazan), 156 pages.
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