New York City, 2016
From the earliest days of my life, I was surrounded by bewitching images. Primarily my mother, the first woman my eyes fell upon, who was and remains beauty incarnate. She left this realm at age 27 – never to age, change or alter in my imagination – creating for me an idealised and unattainable version of feminine perfection. Photographed at age 19 by the great Jean Loup Sieff, her captivating gaze and perfect figure forever hypnotised the child I was and the man I became. These early visions forever distorted my representation of women and, by extension, the world, to the point that only perfection of the subject or the object attracted and retained my attention. It was a curse of sorts, which, without a doubt, restricted my appreciation of Art and, more intimately, my search of companions. This self-imposed limitation, however, forced me to broaden my horizons, lest my universe be constrained to the absurd search for the impossible. Thanks to a few guides, among whom the painter Gérard Fromanger, and numerous books, I gradually opened to aesthetic and artistic worlds that were often the opposite of my own. Despite this, I persist in avoiding, in my photographic work as in what surrounds me, what I consider unattractive or “vulgar”, which is not necessarily to say physical imperfections. Because there too, I can find beauty, wherever it nestles, provided that a form of fragility and femininity be attached to it. These vague and subtle notions are particularly difficult to describe. That's why I try to express them through photography.
Photography, or rather my obsession with it, came to me late. For most of my life, even though I almost always carried a camera around, I was too shy or embarrassed to call myself a “photographer.” Throughout my professional career in the media, I met and befriended many talented artists. At first, I was happy to be a “producer” rather than a “creator”. Over time, however, I became aware that certain aspects of the world around me irresistibly attracted my attention - a pretty woman, an automobile, a landscape, a house, a scene, an object, a face that I simply could not to turn away from. And it finally became clear that I needed to “capture” these ephemeral and furtive visions, for my own benefit as well as, hopefully, that of others. For better or for worse, the camera has now become a third, mechanical eye. I finally accepted being a photographer in my own right. But with each of the images I capture, even if they have no obvious connection or even seem completely unrelated, it is always a fragment of a memory of my mother that I unconsciously detect and perhaps even try and resuscitate. Now that I have explained what presses me to take these photos, I may as well share them. It considerably lightens the burden that was mine alone to bear for so long. It is all a very selfish endeavor, deep down…