You who pass by, pray for the Fallen
What you are, they were,
What are, one day will be…
I never do mise-en-scène.
Without smell or sound, isolated from the true context of the world from which it springs, the photo is like a short sentence extracted from a novel; it is the subjective idea that runs through the mind of the image thief. I start from real, sometimes incongruous situations. We live in the midst of a spectacle, an eternal dialogue between the real and the imaginary.
Among the photos I propose, just two examples (for the other shots it’s the same: simply the reality of various situations):
1) The angel-man posing on a grave is a chance encounter at the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris. This man was hiding behind the tombs.
When I disturbed him, he’d just stuffed his street clothes into a bag and was alone, posing for who knows who, probably for someone who’d disappeared. I asked him if I could photograph him, but I didn’t question him about his motives, in order to respect his privacy and his imaginary world, into which, as an intruder, I was inviting myself.
2) L’homme qui parle à un squelette (Man talking to a skeleton) is not a staged photograph either, but simply a photo of a visitor to the Musée des Vampires (Les Lilas – 93) talking to a skeleton about the afterlife. Perhaps he wanted to know…
Me, I look… I don’t know… I don’t want to know… I photograph.
