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SEROUX
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PHOTOGRAPHY
A PARADOXICAL ATTITUDE
NOTHING BY CHANCE
and yet...
Each shot is planned
with other plastic elements
like preparing for a collision
of particles in an accelerator
Here, each photograph is the product of a precise project, a sometimes lengthy premeditation, a location scouting, and finally a journey in situ to produce it, then a construction, a staging of a very precise space. While some of the shots may seem coherent, each work is a one-off. The unpredictability lies in the emergence of a concept at the outset, not in its realisation.
Finally, the obsessive question that emerges from this work is that of knowing what the image of reality covers. It never corresponds to reality, which is seen as definitively inaccessible in its totality. In this sense, Séroux never ‘takes’ photographs as a reporter does. He ‘makes’ photographs as one ‘makes’ a drawing, with great precision.
Exemple
On 7 March 2017, a huge limestone arch over the sea, which probably appeared in the 19th century, collapsed into the Mediterranean. It had become emblematic of the wild beauty of the island of Gozo, in the north of the Maltese archipelago. Under the effect of a storm that had been raging for several days on this coast, the entire structure collapsed on Wednesday morning, without causing any casualties. Séroux went to the site and took these photos the next day, a work about the disappearance.
Total solar eclipse of 9 March 2016
between 09:51:40 and 09:54:19 local time at Ternate
in the North Moluccan Islands in Indonesia.
It was the 10th total eclipse of the 21st century and the 12th passage of the Moon's shadow over the Earth this century.
Séroux was an ‘eclipse hunter’ for several years, which is characteristic of his approach to photography and life in general. It all starts with appointments. Such and such a time, on such and such a day, in such and such a place. It's going to happen here. And then... Life is also about what happens when you've planned something else. To bear witness to that.
Topics / objects
The content of this work follows no defined direction, either in form or content. It is therefore impossible to lump them together under a general label, a genre or a formal category. The photographs are as much about the journey as the infra-thin, the dreamlike as the concrete, the monumental as the fleeting, the human as the cosmic. Only the conceptual attitude from which they derive can be traced and documented once they are placed in relation to other works. Meaning depends on context.
Paradoxically, the result may be to produce a feeling of spontaneity and coincidence. Everywhere the encounter is conceived as an exuberance of ‘what happens’ and owes nothing to chance. The mind is pro-active in the face of reality, with which it organises ‘moves’, like going to a specific place on a specific day to catch a total eclipse of the sun, for example. There's no room for hesitation or chance. The work does not come from a vacant mind. It is not an open hunt, but a meticulous construction. Photography here assumes a radical premeditation.
PATAGONIA
THE NIGHTS OF THE WIND
National Route 40 crosses the country from north to south, from Cape Virgenes at the southernmost tip of Patagonia to La Quiaca on the Bolivian border. It runs parallel to the Andes mountain range. It begins in Patagonia at sea level and stretches for around 5,000 km, crossing 20 national parks, 18 major rivers and linking 27 Andean passes. Its highest point is the Abra del Acay pass in the province of Salta, at 4,895 metres.
Initially, it was simply a question of going to Londres.
Londres is a small town in Patagonia, in the department of Belén in the province of Catamarca. It lies on the N-40 road at the foot of the Sierras del Shincal, at an altitude of 1,558 metres on the Río Quimivil. It was the first town founded by the Spanish (in 1558) in this province of Catamarca, and the second in what is now Argentina, after Santiago del Estero. It was founded under the name of London de la Nueva Inglaterra, in homage to London, the birthplace of Queen Mary Tudor (‘Mary the Bloody’), wife of King Philip II of Spain.
Collisions-collusions
Improbable confrontations, however infinitesimal, are organised between an Argentinian glacier and an electrical socket, or an apple and a dead bird. In this respect, he is perfectly in tune with the spirit of juxtapositions of meanings, the bearer of associations whose fine words assert themselves after the collision. Séroux offers the curator the chance to spin off certain associations, and in turn to combine clichés with other artistic or non-artistic productions.
Prospecting
Séroux produces a small number of prints, usually in triptychs or in isolation. His photographs can give rise to series that are precisely organised both formally and in terms of meaning.
The coherence or significance of the groups of images presented on this site does not in any way presuppose the meaning that these same prints will subsequently take on in other assemblages. The meaning remains the responsibility of the curator on the one hand, who will contextualise them, and the viewer on the other, who will assimilate the elements according to his or her own sensibility.
The work in the form of assemblages demonstrates the force that underlies living organisms: it is all the more vivid because the components are combined with the energy of their environment.
HALADRIADES / 2016
Anti-Kaïros
There is no single moment. It is never the ‘right moment’, that classic kairos, that gives the signal for the thing to be done. To be there, you have to think about it, identify the action, choose the place, the time, come back to it, determine the light and the angle of view, the thing to be seen and finally act at the right moment. To act quickly, or to act slowly - it is the view of the mind that imposes its temporality and not the thing to be captured. The photograph then achieves the thing seen in all its singularity. It says what the photographer has chosen to show.
Fixity
Try to make ‘THE’ photograph. If it succeeds, that is to say if it touches something beyond the known, beyond the comprehensible, it is by going beyond the mastery of its preparation. The resulting excitement produces a shot that transcends the essence of a desire.
Counter-current
If there are things that stand out in the end, it's because they reflect the spirit of the photographer. What he shows is not what is most visible, but what he has chosen to approach. He sees as telescopes see, oriented to the nearest millimetre, with a field reduced to the extreme of possibilities. As a photographer of blind spots and crevices, of endgames and missing pieces, of hollow moments, the image avoids the overwhelming sense that prevents the mind from searching.
Here, it is the inapparent that matters.
FRENCH THEORY PROJECT / 2018 / Tenerife Island
FRENCH THEORY PROJECT / Places
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