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Enjoy life as a flow of chaos and beauty. Try see­ing the world as per­fect the way it is ; it’s messy, dirty, chaotic… and com­pletely per­fect. The world is beau­ti­ful just as it is.

Revamped from Leo Babauta’s Focus.

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Masks : Charles Fréger’s Wilder Mann, Estelle Hanania, Thomas Rousset

© Charles Fréger

I’ve been think­ing for sev­eral years now about doing a project involv­ing masks, espe­cially shamanic and tra­di­tional masks used by Native Amer­i­cans or eth­nic groups from other con­ti­nents. They fas­ci­nate me. These masks usu­ally ful­fill a spir­i­tual and rit­ual func­tion and evoke a direct con­tact with the spir­its or the gods. Impres­sive, they inspire respect, awe and fear. They dis­con­nect their wearer from reg­u­lar human­ity and con­fer him/her an aug­mented sta­tus. The wearer sym­bol­i­cally loses his/her face to become a medi­a­tor between two worlds.

Yupik shaman Nushagak

How­ever, and if we are to trust the title of Charles Fréger’s new work Wilder Mann, that’s only par­tially what this series is about. Fréger explores the rem­nants of ani­mism in Europe, or the signs of a revi­tal­iza­tion of these prac­tices by small groups of ini­ti­ated peo­ple. Look­ing at these images, Diony­sus the goat and his mys­ter­ies come to mind, but also all the North­ern Europe pagan myths. Here is an ampler review of this work and a link to the book.

This kind of gath­er­ings had already been pho­tographed by Estelle Hana­nia in her Park­ing Lot Hydra series in 2009. Fréger’s work is more sys­tem­atic and his style more frontal and neu­tral, in the tra­di­tion of dead­pan photography.

© Estelle Hanania

Another Euro­pean pho­tog­ra­pher takes inter­est in rit­ual masks and fin­ery : Thomas Rous­set. His series Waska Tatay, shot in Bolivia if I remem­ber well, is an amaz­ing work between per­for­mance, instal­la­tion and land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy. The masks he uses are pretty impres­sive and this par­tic­u­lar pic­ture really scared me the first time I saw it :

© Thomas Rous­set, Raphaël Verona

To come back to Fréger’s images, my favorite are the ones with masks, as they are the most strik­ing to me. Even more strik­ing are the pic­tures where the face and the hair become one indis­tin­guish­able mass.

© Charles Fréger

© Charles Fréger

© Charles Fréger

 

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Printing for the “Next Stop Wuhan” Exhibition

We com­pleted last week the print­ing for this group exhi­bi­tion that will fea­ture the work of two French pho­tog­ra­phers (Benoit Cezard and myself) and four Span­ish pho­tog­ra­phers (Jor­quera, Paco Gomez, Car­los Lujan, Car­los Sanva), all mem­bers of the Nophoto col­lec­tive. Although only Benoit, Jor­quera and I live in Wuhan, all the images were shot here.
The exhi­bi­tion will start on sat­ur­day April 28 and will tour in Wuhan, out­door. I will give more details as soon as I know a bit more.

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Limited Edition Prints on ARTLIGUE

Artligue is a new gallery and art edi­tor in Paris (9 rue des Arque­busiers — 75003 Paris). It offers pho­to­graphic prints in lim­ited edi­tion, with a max­i­mum size of 40 x 50 cm and one fram­ing option cho­sen by the artist. 34 pho­tog­ra­phers take part in the first edi­tion with 2 images each. The guest cura­tor of this edi­tion is Jörg Col­berg.
I’m hon­oured to be part of this edi­tion along with Richard Renaldi, Rob Horn­stra, Cara Pil­lips, Christophe Maout, Lydia Anne McCarthy, Andrés Mar­ro­quín Winkelmann, Ambroise Tézenas, etc.
My images are one pho­to­graph from the Under the Leaves body of work and an indi­vid­ual pic­ture called The Island. They are both dig­i­tal C-prints on satin photo paper within float­ing frames.
If you are in Paris, go and have a look. The web­site also fea­tures inter­views with the artists.
I’m excited to embark on this adven­ture with the Artligue team!

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