This was going to be a run-of-the-mill interview. It turned out to be a beautiful encounter. Lise Sarfati is a wonderful photographer and an unusual character. During our lunch, we barely touched on photography. First, we talked about cinema, which is her main source of reference: Dziga Vertov, Godard, and above all Robert Bresson, whose films she knows by heart. It’s not everyday you can talk about Mouchette or Pickpocket over lunch!
Next, we talked about her wanderings: born in Oran, raised in Nice, she left for Moscow, then Los Angeles where she lived until last month. When it comes to photography, she admits she owes eternal thanks to her mother who, for her fourteenth birthday, gave her a Diane Arbus book published in 1972 by Aperture. She then talked a little about her approach to photography, her primordial obsession with finding the right setting where to plant her camera and then wait for something to happen. This goes completely against the type of street photography in vogue over the past fifty years.
At Paris Photo, Galerie Particulière devotes an exhibition to Lise Sarfati. It is entitled Oh Man, and gives one the impression of being downtown in any major American city. The exhibition comprises a series of seventeen images: fifteen color and two large-format black-and-white photographs made in Los Angeles in 2012 and 2013. Lise Sarfati asserts her rejection of picturesque romanticism. She portrays the city in a personal and metaphoric manner. She throws fresh light on what’s already there. The series Oh Man is unsettling: men are anonymous, yet somehow familiar. They are captured by digital surveillance cameras and become details in a virtual landscape. To describe the series, Lise Sarfati likes to quote Baudelaire: “In certain semi-supernatural conditions of the spirit, the whole depths of life are revealed within the scene—no matter how commonplace—which one has before one’s eyes. This becomes its symbol.”
The Paris Photo poster, the solo show in the gallery booth, a book forthcoming from Steidl, and a film being made about her: she finds all of this amusing. In fact, what perturbs Lise Sarfati is her return to France. Like many expats who spent much time abroad, she is exasperated by the behavior of the French. Here again she references the movies, and specifically Chabrol, the cinematic painter of the inertia of the French society, of bourgeois clichés and stereotypes. It’s so true… We spent two wonderful hours. Thank you, Lise!
Jean-Jacques Naudet
Lise Sarfati, Oh Man
Galerie Particulière
Paris Photo
Novembre 9-12, 2017
Grand Palais
3 Avenue du Général Eisenhower
75008 Paris
France
