At the beginning of the 1980’s, Claude Nori would create the photographic flirt that was in search of a fragile and ephemeral happiness captured by his camera as it caressed joyful and melancholic teenagers posing on the beaches of Italy or at the Jardin de Luxembourg. We will happily rediscover these images now displayed at the Chateau d’Eau in Toulouse, images that time has made ever more moving.
“Proust would write “Young girls only exist to be watched”, and I literally followed his advice for over thirty years, until one of them in a one piece black swimsuit starts calling me “Monsieur,” with much reference. I then thought that it might just be the time to put to rest my Sentimental research and gather my favorite images for a book and an exhibition, after being on the side of everyday life for over thirty years in a sort of fictional nomad mode. A little automatic box served as an instrument of seduction that allowed me to meet strangers, to brake the wall of indifference and to lighten up the sometimes murky colors of reality. I have never tried to disguise myself as an artist, even less as a professional photographer measured by the size of his camera or of the length of the lenses that appear heroically in front of his face. I love the encounters that can happen anywhere. I would often try to capture the moment where all of those girls where unbalanced, unsettled and available for a little while, an epiphany of bliss, a gift from heaven that was offered to both of us.
The Geometry of the Flirt is somehow the aesthetic and sentimental expression of that beautiful adventure.”
Claude Nori
La Géométrie du flirt
Through September 11
Le Château d’Eau
1, Place Laganne
31 300 Tououse
Exposition ouverte du mardi au dimanche de 13.00 à 19.00 – fermé le lundi
La Géométrie du Flirt. Editions Contrejour
