My Frenchtown project brings together subjective portraits of small French towns. Deauville is the fourth leg of this journey. Each time, on site, I conduct an identity investigation in search of a French reality that feeds on my attraction to cinematographic aesthetics. Thus are born images that are both “real” and “fictional”, “documentary” and “poetic”.
In Deauville, I chose to work in black and white and in color. The cinema that came to my memory was not that of Hollywood, but rather that of a Visconti, Antonioni or Nuri Bilge Ceylan. A feeling of long and stretched time, of endless tracking shots… It was winter. I brought Deauville into my own universe.
Later, I saw the tourists arriving, the good weather, the beach business… So I left on tiptoe. I was dispossessed of my city. I gave it back to others, quite willingly. The program had changed, I left with my imaginary film, my memories and my beautiful melancholy towards other skies. But I will come back to Deauville, in winter, of course…
Jean-Christophe Bechet
Jean-Christophe Béchet, born in 1964 in Marseille, has lived and worked in Paris since 1990. His photographic works have been the subject of numerous exhibitions and monographs in which he mixes black and white and color but also different formats. He has published numerous books, notably with Loco: European Puzzle, Habana Song and URSS Summer 1991.
www.jcbechet.com
Planches Contact
RESIDENCES & UNPRECEDENTED CREATIONS in Normandy
Deauville Photography Festival 13th edition – Oct. 22, 2022 > Jan. 1, 2023
Jean-Christophe Béchet “Deauville, a fiction of reality”
Les Franciscaines: 145b Av. de la République, 14800 Deauville (10.30am-6pm except Mondays)
https://planchescontact.fr/fr
