The list of filmmakers who have occasionally but diligently ventured into still images is not that long. David Lynch was a jack-of-all-trades, with photos of abandoned factories, voluptuous female nudes, serial snowmen and image manipulation. Wim Wenders explored Australian and American landscapes, told visual stories during his many travels and did a lot of Polaroid photography. Abbas Kiarostami, who started out as a painter and graphic designer, exhibited his contemplative and poetic images in London, New York and at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. Stanley Kubrick, for his part, worked as a photographer from the age of 17 before embarking on film.
Specializing in the absurd treatment of human relationships and a rather unhappy worldview, Yorgos Lanthimos quickly distinguished himself from his colleagues with his oddity and freedom of tone. A director of Greek origin, he had already published some photographs from the making of in the book containing the screenplay for The Lobster, his 2015 film (A24 collection at Mack). In Dear God, the Parthenon is still broken (Void editions), he turned away from the shooting of Pauvres créatures (2023) to show what is off-screen, behind the scenes, and tried to give his photographs a life of their own. Investing in medium and large format photo equipment and developing the films himself, he even involved Emma Stone, his favorite actress and now co-producer of his films, in the process.
Here, for I shall sing these songs beautifully – the book takes its title from the poetry of Sappho, a Greek Antiquity poetess his photographic language can evoke certain great names like Henry Wessel, for the exteriors and the environment of residential neighborhoods; Eggleston too, for the precise and tight framing, and the frozen moments. But the whole retains a strangeness made of tensions and interrupted movements. Made on the very location of his last filming King of kindness (2024) in New Orleans, his obsessions seem still present but try to tell us a different story. Mostly in black and white, the book is interspersed with color images. A few short sentences are scattered along the pages, evoking a script being written, as if whispered by an imaginary voice-over. Here and there we find his actresses and actors, some recognizable, Emma Stone therefore, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe. The characters all seem taken aback, as if frozen, with their gazes lost in the void, solitary inhabitants of disturbing places and climates. The cover of the book, which frames a black and white photo, is adorned with two different shades depending on how you orient it in front of your eyes, purple or gray-green; a first invitation for the reader to look twice.
Jean-Jacques Ader
« I shall sing these songs beautifully » de Yorgos Lanthimos aux éditions Mack (G.B.)
https://mackbooks.eu/
https://www.lanthimos.com/photography/
