The fiftieth dialogue, the last one in our first series, which brings to a close almost five years of reflections and stimulating encounters, is a tribute to Jean-Jacques Naudet. My remembrance and my deepest gratitude go to this extraordinary man, for having initiated in all of us the most profound, original, and exhilarating dialogue with photography.
Ettore Molinario
Amitié. This is how Jean-Jacques Naudet used to sign off our communications and his friendship – so precious and generous over the years – has been for me an extraordinary gift, a privilege I will miss terribly. The dialogues in my collection were also born out of the complicity of Jean-Jacques and his editorial team, who supported us from the very beginning, publishing our reflections, provocations, and discoveries every month for almost five years.
Imagining the secret alchemy that lies within every photograph – an alchemy that radiates through the encounter between two images and gives rise to a mysterious « third » one – we arrived at the fiftieth dialogue. In the adult, fully mature beauty of this issue we decided to take a short break and move on with new voices and different projects.
This dialogue therefore brings together the two extremes, as if I wished to offer my collection in a single glance: from Louise, a female cross-dresser in an anonymous mid-nineteenth-century daguerreotype, to Evie, a young woman portrayed by Katy Grannan in Humboldt County, that mythical region of California where, for at least two centuries, many have chosen to hide. On one side, a photographer’s studio; on the other, a place to disappear – perhaps the least photographic place in the world, despite the beauty of the landscape it is set in, amid ocean, rivers, and forests. And yet it was precisely in this place, protected by its wild remoteness and welcoming because it lies outside conventional morality, that Katy Grannan has reaffirmed that disappearing is impossible: no one can evade the seduction of the image. In the still waters of a lake, a reflection of the self appears; the white backdrop of a posed portrait is already present. Just a handful of centuries separate Narcissus from Nadar.
When Katy Grannan arrived in Humboldt County, she knew no one, perhaps a problem for a photographer. The solution was a newspaper advertisement: « people for portraits wanted ». And people came immediately, each offering something of themselves, freely. In Katy Grannan’s own words, I too can say that for me photographing and collecting photography means « waiting for an encounter and discovering something unexpected » in others and in myself.
Across the fifty dialogues and the hundred photographs that shaped them, I left ajar the door of a secret room and waited patiently for « something unexpected » to appear. At times it was the lesser-known side of a great author, or the strength of an anonymous photographer; at others, the feminine element hidden within every man; at others still, pushing the gaze toward the stars, it was darkness that called, the dark matter, within and beyond us, that surrounds us, creates us, determines us.
This is why Jean-Jacques Naudet’s amitié was so important to me and to the immense community of those who love photography. His friendship was a light that guided us and enabled us to see things never seen before.
Ettore Molinario
DISCOVER THE COLLECTION DIALOGUES
https://collezionemolinario.com/en/dialogues
