Eric Petr is a French photographer born in 1961. He lives in Marseille and, very discreetly, walks around with his camera into public and sacred places. His photographs dazzle, amaze young children through their beauty. They subjugate, astonish mature viewers. Eric Petr, at seven years old, was a precocious and talented “shooter”. Humble and belonging to no one, his photos, variations of light, summarize what life is: fragility and greatness.
Why did you choose photography?
I didn’t choose it. It imposed itself on me as if something in my subconscious memory was always connected to it. When I look into the eye of my camera, a distance from the world is created, and this distance is what gives me the necessary space to feel in sync with this world. Ever since I looked though the viewfinder of the 6×9 my father lent me at a very young age, I was fascinated by this alternating ambiguity between being an observer and an actor in the observation. For me, photography is the way to free something unconscious, dominated by an instinctive drive, inspiration.
How did you end up making these types of photos?
It was a long journey, but, in the end, when I think about it, everything is pretty consistant. I always had the desire to draw out the invisible record of the interconnection of universal elements and the relationship that connects us to them.
What would you like to photograph that you haven’t yet?
My dream would be to photograph what came before the Big Bang, just to reassure myself and tell myself that our universe is only a fraction of a spark of a world in perpetual movement, not a world frozen between parentheses, a world without a father.
What influences the figurative for you?
The figurative stabilizes the elements. It assures us that we are. It reassures us in the sense that we can see, is. It creates an image frozen in our present. This image take an atemporal dimension through which our minds can travel in the spacetime of our imagination.
