Stéphane Charpentier is a French photographer currently based in Athens. His photos are shot on film and are always charged with emotions. Stéphane Charpentier’s photographic projects are long-term projects, giving him plenty of time to review when he selects images for his series.
When and how did photography come into your life?
After having worked in a record shop in Paris, in 2003 I went to Madrid to participate in a course in a photography school. I focussed on a personal search based on a kind of pictorial journal. It was neither a conceptual nor a commercial documentary practice, but rather a mean of investigation, of experimentation, to develop a personal way of looking, of translating my sensitivity and my own relationship with the world into pictures.
Your photographs are endowed with a strong emotional charge, is this the fruit of a rigorous creative process or do you follow a rather more instinctive path?
I seek to capture images that evoke human duality, its light and its shadow. This mysterious sense of the images can only be seen in an emotional way. I work with black and white film and produce the prints myself in the darkroom, Even if the shot is always instinctive, the process of creation is extremely long and demanding.
How long have you lived in Athens? Does your city inspire you?
I came to Athens at the beginning of 2012 with the musician Frédéric D. Oberland to work on starting up Oiseaux Tempête, a project combining sound and images. For several years I spent half of my time in Greece before moving here permanently. It’s a country that had been devastated by an ever-deepening crisis and that had to discover a pathway to recovery. As an artist I wanted to work at the heart of these new challenges and questions. We are also at the crossroads of many passionate cultures and surrounded by a majestic natural environment.
Tell us about your series The Eclipse?
I envisage my work as a series without end, but I regroup my images in sections such as The Eclipse, which comprises only pictures produced in Greece. The idea is to give the feeling of the effect of getting dark. It’s a group of symbolic visions, often of ordinary people trapped under the pressure of the moment.
What is the image of which you’re most proud?
I really can’t choose my favourite photograph. I think that the great works are those of which you don’t tire, which always retain their sense of wonder, questioning or mystery when you look at them.
Joséphine Faisant
Joséphine Faisant is an author specialising in photography. She lives and works in Athens, from where she uncovers local talent.
