Arles 2020 day by day by Thierry Maindrault
How many forgotten places, how much time wasted of which there are only remains, spoils, wrecks and other waste abandoned by all. They are objects like humans, their earthly life inexorably disappears. It is the same for their soul (if it does not exist only in the imagination of the poet) which slowly blows away in secret in the universal vastness.
At the first view of Antoine Herscher’s photographs, we imagine that the author is strongly attracted by the aestheticism of this progressive erasure of what seemed eternal. If you take time for good look, it is the unusual nature of a situation inside our traditional cultural heritage that prevails. Of course, each image is well constructed with an adapted composition and an effective light approach; but it is the eccentric, bordering on intellectual provocation, that takes over.
Antoine Herscher seems surprised by what he discovers in his quests, on a large geographic territory, which he insists on sharing with us objectively. The photographed scenes are unexpected and surprising, and yet they are very often in front of our eyes. Our eyes are they only open?
The author does not ask the question, he testifies and he tries to open our eyes and to make us understand the reality of all these things which are very well managed by Nature and that the Time will do nothing for us.
The exhibition was the subject of a book published by Actes Sud, published in November 2019.
La Croisière
63 boulevard Emile Combes
13200 ARLES
July 01 until August 30, 2020 from 01 pm to 07 pm.
