Gregor Beltzig shot this photographs at the Hôtel des Grands Hommes, where he spent 48 hours in September 2013 for the Prix PHPA. His series Les boîtes des sentiments, about loss, emotional wounds and a return to life, is also on display here.
“It’s been quite some time that my girlfriend and I have lived far apart from each other. We spend long periods without seeing each other, and when we do, it’s brief. We often meet in a city halfway between where we live, a city we don’t know and which we surely won’t get to know, since we’re only meeting up to see each other and nothing else… We enter the hotel room on Friday night the way Adam and Eve entered paradise, and it will be our paradise for the next 48 hours. A paradise that isn’t made to last. A paradise that reveals it fragility the morning we realize we have to leave each other again. But that’s the only way a paradise can exist, as a moment in time… A paradise on earth must be aware of its approaching end. Otherwise it will seem banal. Because of the pain of our separation, we realize how happy we are when we’re together.”
“Already for some time I have a long distance relationship over several continents. My love and I don’t meet for long and everytime when we do it’s not for long.
Often we meet in a town somewhere halfway between our regular lives. A town that we both don’t know, in a country whose language we don’t speak and that we will never learn, because we meet there just to see each other and nothing else.
We enter our hotel room on Friday evening as Adam and Eve entered paradise. This will be our paradise for 48 hours. A paradise that is doomed to fail. A paradise that shows its caducity (évanescence) the morning we realize it is leaving day. But that is the only way this paradise can exist; as a moment in time. This paradise needs the element of a nearing end, otherwise it would become banal. Because it is the pain of separation that makes us realize how happy we are being able to be together.
In this way the hotel room interests me as the space where I would like to stage my temporary paradise of Adam and Eve. “
Gregor Beltzig
