News

Cover of IL magazine

22 août 2010

New Cover of IL magazine, with the Penitente series, 2004… made in Sevilla during the Semana Santa. The series was also shown this year in Utrecht for the Fotodok festival.

Sometime, you sit your ass in a crossroad and wonder if you’ll choose the school of Caravagio or the one of Vermeer… My heart is in between. I love the light in everywhere, like if the light was coming from the subject itself, and also, I love to bring my own light in a context which has a particular light, a usual one. When a place is dark, it’s just a fantaisy to decide to light it all, to see what you’re not usually seeing. I went this time at the RUDAS bath, in Budapest, one of the oldest public baths of the town, that I discovered 8 years ago (while I was doing the Sihuhu series in Hungary). I really wanted to do a project there, something dealing with old bodies. I felt that nudity (not complete) would be interesting for me if there’s really a reason why the person I photograph are nude for a real reason. And this public bath have been the best place – almost mythologic – to face the old nudity, the body as it is and not as we wish it to be.

Kudász Gábor Arion assistant

11 juillet 2010

A picture of my setting, by Kudász Gábor Arion, Hungarian photographer who kindly assisted me for the Rudas series. We needed a team for this project, to find the models, to get the permission from the bath, to work on the settings. Gergely Lazlo and Peter Rakozi (POC members) made my project possible.

What a contrast, isn’t it?

11 juillet 2010

This is one of the images of my Jockey series… The show will start only in October and I still work on my selection. This image is very important for me, since there’s something between the statism and the movement. Things are really static and give the feeling of a captured gesture. Not too far of Muybridge, Could not stop thinking of the Baltasar Carlos on his poney, by Velasquez (« El Príncipe Baltasar Carlos a Caballo »).

Life is busy, as usual

7 juin 2010

With several new series, mainly commissioned which take me on different territories that I already explored like this project for the New-York times magazine, coming out this week, showing a set of portraits of the next generation of American soccer player. I photographed in Dallas and Salt Lake city, in USA, Oslo and (near) Amsterdam, in Europe. A very good experience to get further with portraits in a very tight schedule. I discovered my attitude with portrait more « elegant » than I would have done it a few years ago. It’s strange to admit that, but I sometime get a few instincts from fashion maybe… like if there would be a « style » involved. Usually, I thinkI would have been more radical and still, it’s just the same work, I’m sure. I’m just not 25 years old anymore. In my first book (Portraits photographiques et uniformes », talking about the Notre dame series, Philippe Arbaizar wrote that somehow, the empathy in my work was probably coming from my age. I was 25 and my models were around 18-20… I was often the age of the persons I photographed. Now, there’s a difference, and I can feel it. The relation is different and also give me the capacity to photograph another generation… older than me.

And sometime, I do fashion

18 mars 2010

This is in the last ANOTHER Magazine (Issue 18, Spring/summer 2010). I collaborated with Karen Langley, Mae Delaney and Zoe Maughan, Tomoro Ohashi (Hair) and Hiromi Ueda (Make-up). We worked with 14 models from 8 agencies around a fashion project twisting sport uniform, fashion and a touch of burlesque. I loved doing this.

New project about primitivism

9 février 2010

I’m in Austria, finally starting my new project about primitivism: I can not totally explain what I’m looking for, but I think I definitively need to face a certain wildness, in the context of some old communities and their ritual… I have started with the Pechten and Wilder men in Austria. This project will take me in Hungary, Switzerland, East and South of France, Italy and Germany… I feel there is a part of myself dealing with the very codified uniforms of the Empire series, or the Chinese Opera costume, so elegant they are. And then, there is some space for this wildness too…also if the communities I have started to meet have also some complex systems, rituals, a wish to be. On the top of everything, the mask is totally hiding the face. No eyes appearing… Identity has to be found somewhere else. This week, while photographing these communities, I sometime felt that I was doing more a sculptural work than a photographic one… All these materials are fascinating me… Fur, bones. wooden masks… We’ll see.

I finally saw my show

9 février 2010

For the first time today… Short school Haka is presented on the « project wall » of the Kunsthalle of Wien since June 2009 until the end of february.

It’s been more than ten years now

3 février 2010

I met Estelle and Helene for the first time when they were 9 years old, in a School of Ballet. And since that, I’ve been doing their portraits, always in that way, season after season. Strange to discover after a few years that they were automatically standing always Estelle on the left and Helene on the right. Only once, they exchanged. They were 13. This series is not finished yet, and I still don’t know what will be its issue. I have no plane for this. It’s my vanité… It deals with our time going on so fast, our energy consuming and everytime I meet Estelle and Helene for a new portrait, it’s like a break, a moment to think about what I’ve been doing. It’s more a ritual than anything else. Ritual and photography go together like twins, I woudl say. Estelle and Helene will be 20 this year and I hope they’ll invite me for their birthday this summer, if I’m not too old.