After having presented last year at La Galerie des Photographes the « paysages véhiculaires », where cars were placed in a geographical and temporal space, here is another personal vision on the theme of landscape, with a selection of images which mix interior decorations and exterior spaces. Windows, bay windows and other openings towards the world are of course at the heart of the theme, but here it is also a question of asserting the autobiographical character of the landscape. As the American photographer Robert Adams rightly says: “landscape images have three truths to offer us: geographical, autobiographical and metaphorical.
Geography alone is sometimes boring, autobiography often anecdotal, and metaphor dubious. But together, these truths reinforce each other and reinforce that feeling that we all try to keep intact: a tenderness for life. “. An interior landscape is also a state of mind, an atmosphere, a suspended moment. Like those long days spent in distant hotels. Like those lost moments waiting in a bus station or in an airport. So many weak moments that all photographers know well and of which photography can transform in strong moments.
All these furtive, sometimes melancholic emotions are the basis of this series built over the years and travels. The places represented (Valparaiso, Tokyo, American motels, the Himalayas, Greenland, etc.) are not trivial of course, but beyond showing an exterior panorama and reflecting it with a certain aestheticization, the interior landscape seeks to establish an equal relationship between what we see and what we feel. From this assumed subjectivity is born the gaze of the spectator. A free look, an open look at the world where he too will imagine his own sentimental journey and discover an imaginary landscape anchored in his own memory…
Jean-Christophe Béchet
Jean-Christophe Béchet : Paysages Interieurs
du 27 mars au 27 avril 2024
La Galerie des Photographes
29, rue Keller
75011 Paris
www.lagaleriedesphotographes.fr
