Guillaume Geneste is a printer of photographs and founder of the photo lab La Chambre Noire, a cozy, old-fashioned place in the 11th Arrondissement in Paris. He regularly prints images by Bernard Plossu, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Denis Roche, Pierre De Fenoyl, Martine Franck, K. Sluban, among many others, most often for exhibitions in the capital city’s top venues. In his spare time, he is also a photographer. Like his studio, his images are steeped in an atmosphere of intimacy.
Photographing is for me an act of love closely tied to my encounter with the Colette in 1991 as well as a stand taken in the face of passing time. I photograph out of desire and need by choosing moments I wish to remember; by taking images of our life, with an amateur autofocus camera that fits into the palm of my hand. Unable to look through the viewfinder, I often frame my shots vaguely uncertain of slicing space at the right point. Sure about the timeframe, I am less so about the moment: so I need to take several shots of the same scene. The act of framing without looking, and never deciding what to focus on, have turned chance into one of the most magical constants in photography. Chance intertwined with desire and the pleasure of the moment that must be recorded.
Photography certainly is an art form one can talk about the better the more one does it. The brevity of the shot makes the immediate repetition of the photographic act possible and often plunges the photographer into doubt and uncertainty as to the resulting image. Trying anew, time and time again. The doubt doesn’t go away once the film has been developed, in the face of successfully captured moments. Looking at my contact sheets gives me a sense of total rediscovery of the lived moment, and right then and there I can see exactly what I perceived more than really seen.
Every successful photograph is a true victory over passing time, and this sense of reassurance can only be prolonged in the repetition of the shot, that is, in beginning anew. This is how I have been photographing us for the past twenty-five years using the same approach; and if I believed at some point that these constraints were limiting, the arrival of children broke down those barriers. Chloé and Gabriel have always accepted the camera, sometimes even forgetting it was there, but definitely wanting to be in the frame right next to us.
The photographing device, this companion in love always nestled in my pocket, has allowed me to assemble a body of images which, set one next to the other, have come to resemble over time a film rather than a family album. A single rule: being in all the photos with those I love.
Guillaume Geneste
Guillaume Geneste, L’ordre des photos
Published by the Éditions Filigranes
€22
