His name: Le Turk, we were supposed to publish his work last month as part of the Promenades Photographiques de Blois.
Due to lack of space, it was not.
So here we repair this injustice with the images from his series Commedia and this text.
Sébastien Salamand, known as Le Turk, is a photographer who has been delighting us with his stories for a little over ten years now. It is now in his studio, in Contres, in Loir-et-Cher, that he continues to build large film sets in which he composes his photographic work. He takes us into his world made of wood, polystyrene and cardboard where he questions us about our authenticity, about our own theatricality.
A work at the crossroads of the arts…
Between painting and photography? Initially a designer, he views photography as the simplest way to combine two obsessions: one aesthetic and the other narrative. So he ditches making comic books for a drill and cutters. He himself constructs the pictorial universes in which his characters will tell a little of their stories. First alone, and now surrounded by a team, his photographs are born at the crossroads of a multitude of talents that he directs. Around these initial drawings on which the next image is sketched, is being built, painted, it patinated, lighted, them make up is applied, hair are done, and then is time for dressing… between decorators and painters, between photography and cinema.
…and influences
Like the techniques, the work is at the crossroads of a plethora of influences. From Jheronimus Bosch to Franck Miller, from Johann Sebastian Bach to Michael Jackson, from Fellini to Burton… But also from the History of Europe since the Renaissance. The work is a synthesis of classic and popular references that rocked the author’s youth. His narrative desires spring as much from Tintin as from Hell’s Gate. And it is in this amalgam of aesthetic encounters that Turk’s photographic work is born.
Site Web : www.leturk.com
Instagram : @leturkphotographies
