The series L’Habit fait Le Moine came about while I was doing a job I didn’t like in order to earn a living. For a while, while living in Beijing, I was hired to photograph parties. But I found it difficult and unpleasant to photograph the faces of people I didn’t know, didn’t care for, and who gave me no feeling of familiarity. So I started photographing them from the side, from below, from within—from everywhere except from where they were expecting to be seen. I saw abstract forms and colors that were just as alive, but less “talkative.” Since then, I’ve continued to see individuals in society as the “living pillars” that we are, the “forest of symbols” of which Baudelaire spoke so truly.
Charles-Henry Bedue
