Sandrine Lopez photographed Moshé, a rabbi in his nineties, over the course of two years. A book and an exhibition present this touching encounter.
Moshé is a rabbi in his nineties, living in Brussels. Sandrine Lopez met him in the street, one evening a few years ago, and asked if she could take his portrait. During her first visit, after she had made a few images, he asked her to help him take a bath. This was the beginning of a long process during which, every week, “I had the immense privilege of being able to photograph him. Our meetings revolved for the most part around this ritual bath.”
What have you learned from this intimate encounter with Moshé?
It’s difficult to sum it up in a few words. It is all the more difficult that one may never really know what a given project changes about you, how it allows you to exorcise a fear, to go beyond obsessive questions, engage deeper with images that haunt you. It is essential to explore these questions, and to do it in the most comprehensive way possible, allowing the rest to seep into you. All these processes take place at a rhythm that eludes us, in zones where it is impossible to formulate anything clearly. What I can say, however, is that the act of photographing, or of creating in general, has something to do with obsessive thinking that must be explored.
Is there anything about Moshé that you don’t show in your images?
A ton of things. A reality that I don’t see necessary to evoke, an intimacy that should not be revealed. There is something private, you don’t really know who he is as a man, and this is how I wanted it.
What do you feel you are showing of yourself?
My fascination about what a human being is, a certain form of beauty that I believe in.
Is the nudity of an older man more “approachable” than that of a young man? What if Moshé was 35 years old?
If Moshé was 35 years, he clearly wouldn’t have been as interesting to me. At the moment I crossed paths with Moshé, I had been expecting him. It was when I arrived in Brussels and had an image in my head of an older man lying naked in his bed. When I saw Moshé, I didn’t think it was him, but certainly something had thought it before me and that was what drew me to him.
Do you worry about old age?
I do. But more about the fact of growing old and the fear of falling ill. The fear of growing old comes ahead of old age, and so it begins when one is still quite young. I imagine old age as something rather gentle, withdrawn, surrounded just by the things I love: books, calm, time, mountains, cats.
Interview conducted by Cilou de Bruyn
Cilou de Bruyn is a writer and photography consultant. She lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.
Book: Sandrine Lopez, Moshé
Published by d & books /
L’éditeur du dimanche
€65
Exhibition: Librairie Peinture Fraîche, Brussels
November 2 to 18, 2017
10 Rue du Tabellion
1050 Ixelles
Belgium
