THE ABSENTS

Instead of the crucial moment or the eloquent gesture,
I try to capture the peace of a diorama, an affected, petrified reality. Starting from a rereading of the concept of tableau vivant, I put bodies in private spaces on stage, where I impose immobility upon them as an interpretation method.
In this constructed reality, bodies suggest a movement, an action that is fixed, slowed down. The present moment is sacrificed by preferring the constructed image to the original, the suggested action to the real one. Being half-way between intention and effect. A space where, in spite of the privacy, nobody plays the role of themselves, where nobody displays anything that is not already obvious. This is the triumph of falseness, of appearance, where time expands itself for the personal pleasure of the observer, within a society where movement and speed are in its core. But far from a first reading related to pictorialism only, I try to show
a reality that is reluctant to empathy, to the obvious and the immediate. Apathy as a critical attitude as opposed to the systematic use of the image of contemporary young people as driving forces of desire and as advertising containers, always ready for the delight of older generations. "Be cool, show no emotions", Lou Reed said to his audience live in Take no prisoners, "emotionless" was the way Cindy Sherman would describe her Film stills, Jarmush's cinema, the models shown by Vanesa Beecroft, the teenagers in front of Rineke Dijkstra... A photogenic emptiness, no doubt, but also an act of resistance against the vulgarity of the picture that speaks a thousand words, borrowing what we have already learned from other photographs or in front of the TV.