Mr. Hulot would be like an “uncle” for the author, he presents his photos as a “Jour de fête (The Big Day)”. If Jacques Tati looked after his sequences, Jean-Paul Senez, a good-natured and dilettante stroller, redistributes the plans that are given to him.
Choosing to approach photography through routes (personal, diverse, real or imaginary) is a option that suits me well, even if I sometimes go on land already plowed. It’s both to feel close to and far from everything.
These interior, sedentary or nomadic open paths allow me to go where I want, to build short stories, to give them to see, to borrow from others, to appropriate new mythologies, and to propose to glances multiple readings of my images and as many possible grammars, either by remaining in the linear and frontal narration, or by giving free rein to other narrative forms and playing with sound, space, formats …
To grasp and apprehend the variability of meaning is to admit that the fragile readability of the image passes through the diversity of sensibilities that contemplate it, that manipulate it …
“The significance of contemporary photography lies in its relationship to other, older photographs, and this universality allows me to reconcile the image of the past with the image of the present.” Jean-Paul Senez
It would be trivial to write that each photograph of Jean-Paul Senez tells a story. In truth, they swarm with stories, they are composed of stories, because his eye excels in “composing”, as in catching the flight of conversations, and restore the “air”, the transparent text, the melody. There is the “living” of his work which is not a criterion finally, it seems to me, that by looking at it one feels the feeling of entering a space that vibrates with voices, murmurs, asides, monologues, and pauses, concentration, attentions (suspended breath) and glaring joys.
From: A l’infini(notes)
Alain Le Saux
