I would like to end this trilogy of articles dedicated to Serge Assier, with his creative side which is an essential part of his photographic journey. Behind the meticulous photographer who chased the scoop for Le Provençal, the daily newspaper of Provence, and for Gamma, his press agency, there is also a creator. On the one hand, the news items, sometimes bordering on the sordid, on the other, faithful friends who share his certain taste for escape to a spiritual elsewhere.
This is how the young photographer was able to share the friendship of René Char (the pope of post-war poets), then that of turbulent Fernando Arrabal. His meetings with Michel Butor, Edmonde Charles Roux, Bernard Noël, Dominique Sampiero and many others, all contributed to his cultural base and his creative roots.
This reporter whose feet stumbled, throughout his life, on many of the abominations that surround us. This jovial speaker with crude and trivial words in his Provençal tradition mixed with the Marseille accent. This photographer with precise gestures that are flawless. It is this man, outrageous and provocative, who hides behind “… the other side of the mirror…”.
The inspiration is permanent, during his foreign discoveries, during his surrealist challenges, in his emotional projects.
Far from being ignorant in the handling of an inked pen, he prefers to base his important creations with his dark boxes to trap the light that he has always known.
It is unexpectedly that trapped this or that scene that the light revealed only for him. The beauty of the soul, the curve of an object, the risk of a life, the versatility of nature, the beauty of work or the unpredictability of men will be gleaned from his various journeys.
His struggles with the unpredictable, coupled with the pain of conception, led him to challenge his established contemporary poet friends. The latter lent themselves to these technically improbable parts. The creation of parallel poems, the writer on one rail, the photographer on the other. Two creative constructions, one of which was neither the explanation nor the illustration of the other. Two understated expressions, which remains a pinnacle for the imagination.
Sharing emotions remains a thread held together for Serge. How to share feelings with everyone. His images, with personal involvement, oriented towards aesthetics, remain stopped between his instinct for freedom (of which extravagance remains his favorite vector) and the canons established for generations, whose imperative effectiveness he knows. And then, it is a question, characteristic for all authentic creators, knowing when it is stupid to press the shutter button because the intimate image is so beautiful.
The Media Library of Heritage and Photography has just decided to take charge of Serge Assier’s photographic collection. We can only rejoice as the thousands of photos concerned represent more than half a century of history, boxed up like the memory of a society in the midst of change.
Obviously, Serge is not just an excellent manipulator of photographic techniques. It’s good to make it known outside the small microcosm of photography. This will perhaps reach the ears of the new elites making “photographers”.
Thierry Maindrault
