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AGAVES

Le projet AGAVES est un recueil photographique, un brin poétique. Il regroupe des images d’agaves en fleurs — les agaves sont en fleurs lorsqu’elles meurent. J’ai donc foulé le pourtour méditerranéen pour les photographier et enregistrer leur ultime instant sur Terre.
Ce projet à pris la forme d’un livre.  

(ENG) This book is a collection of photographs, with a hint of poetry. It documents the agaves americana found in the Mediterranean area.

>>> Acheter un exemplaire du livre

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Cette Vue Que Je N’aurai Plus

Installation, Photographies & sérigraphie

« Cette Vue que je n’aurai plus » est un projet qui traite de l’expérience que l’on peut faire du temps présent, entre fugacité et élasticité. 

Ce rapport au temps s’exprime à travers des lieux qui sont des motifs de la contemplation par excellence. Toujours dans un rapport physique à ces lieux, que parfois je traverse – comme la montagne, ou que je contemple – comme la mer, dans une certaine idée du sublime. 

Les moments capturés sont parfois fugace. Un ciel calme avant une tempête, les derniers rayons de soleil, autant de moments qui, l’instant d’après ne seront plus.  

Dans ces images, il y a souvent une obstruction à la vue, un voile qui nous gène et qu’on voudrait soulever pour découvrir l’image qui est réellement à voir. Les textes sérigraphiés, écrit comme des Haiku, tiennent aussi ce rôle de rideau occultant par l’image mentale qu’ils créent. Toujours rattachés au présent par les éléments météorologiques et physiques qu’ils contiennent. 

Un va-et-vient s’impose alors entre l’image mentale insufflée par le texte et l’image figurée sur laquelle celui-ci est imprimé. Par cette combinaison, je viens questionner les images sur leur signification et leur représentation.

J’aime l’idée d’avoir un rapport actif face aux images, et ne pas être uniquement dans la contemplation passive. De la même manière, que d’avoir une présence active dans ces lieux et venir ressentir ce qu’il s’y passe.  Lorsque les images suggèrent alors un instant comme suspendu, qui durerait à l’infinie. 

Aller chercher ce que ces images suggèrent, ce qu’elles viennent susciter comme émotions, à quelles sensations nous renvoient-elles. 

Et dès lors, étirer un peu ces instants et venir contrer l’idée que, parfois, le temps nous file entre les doigts.

Vue d’exposition “ici, le temps s’étire” à la galerie Caroline O’Breen. Amsterdam, 2021

Cette vue que je n’aurai plus, 2020

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When the Mountain took the Place of my Father – The Book

Limited editions of 100 books, self-publication by the artist in 2019, 40x27x1,5 cm

 

« When the mountain took the place of my father » is a praise to my father through the personification of the mountains, treated in portrait.

In 2017, my family and I walked the Tour of the Mont Blanc. Two years after my father’s died. During 4 days of hiking, I took pictures of the mountains, summits and peaks that surrounded us.

When I came back and looked at the images I had made, I realized that somehow the mountain had healed us. It had given us a direction, a path to go to. We could eventually move forward.

These mountains were standing in front of us like monuments, gradually embodying the portrait of my late father who, in a way, would never disappear.

For me, portraying a non-human figure is a way to deal with the idea of Landscape – the experience of landscapes. In a different way, it is to get closer to the concept of the milieu, where our presence and the feeling of the atmosphere become inseparable from that place.

 

 

“This is about my father.
This about the mountain
— The idea of Sublime.

This is about feeling alive after facing death.

This is about something tough to reach.
This is about preserving and triggering memories.
—The idea of the impossible”

 

Here, the presentation of the photographs of this project.

 

To purchase the book, please send me an e-mail (contact(at)victoireeouzan.com)

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When the mountain took the place of my father

Photographs & Silkscreen, 2017-2019

 

« When the mountain took the place of my father » is a praise to my father through the personification of the mountains, treated in portrait.

In 2017, my family and I walked the Tour of the Mont Blanc. Two years after my father’s died. During 4 days of hiking, I took pictures of the mountains, summits and peaks that surrounded us.

When I came back and looked at the images I had made, I realized that somehow the mountain had healed us. It had given us a direction, a path to go to. We could eventually move forward.

These mountains were standing in front of us like monuments, gradually embodying the portrait of my late father who, in a way, would never disappear.

For me, portraying a non-human figure is a way to deal with the idea of Landscape – the experience of landscapes. In a different way, it is to get closer to the concept of the milieu, where our presence and the feeling of the atmosphere become inseparable from that place.

 

“This is about my father.
This about the mountain
— The idea of Sublime.

This is about feeling alive after facing death.

This is about something tough to reach.
This is about preserving and triggering memories.
—The idea of the impossible”

 

Here, the book about this project

 

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Mountain Portrait

Analog photographs, C-print, 100×66 cm,  2018

It was winter 2014, and this was the first time I took a photograph of a mountain. It was very cold. I was standing at the cliff’s edge.
The Massif des Écrins, in the French Alps, was covered by a thick layer of snow; the image was very sweet, voluptuous, and sharp at the same time. It looked like an ocean of untouched snow ripped by the rock.

I never stopped taking photographs of mountains since this winter. Since then, every year, I went back there to add pictures to the library I started. What’s fascinating about mountains?

A few years later, in 2017, I’ve hiked around the Mont Blanc; during 5 days the sun was almost burning. Every time I passed over ridges, I discovered a new face of the “Top of the Europe”.

How can I grasp and appreciate the idea of mountain? To be on the mountain surrounded by such a grandeur?

It might be at this time that the idea of portraying a mountain popped-up to my mind. To me, this might be a way to embrace the idea of mountain and the experience you can have up there. I photographed each peak I was about to reach, and then, I turned myself back facing the other side and shot it. I tried to capture which seemed to be elusive.

But what if, instead of being photographs, those images could trigger memories?

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M i l i e u *

Booklet, hand binded, editions of 30, 20x26x1,5 cm, 2018

 

In French “milieu” means the way you perceive the environment, and surroundings.
It also means two contradictory things at the same time: the middle of something, and something entirely as well.

I arrived in Amsterdam in August 2017.
I had never been there before. I had no clue what I was going to find and experience over there.

How to discover a city you’ve never been before?
How to make picture of a new place, without making a cliché of it?

They are all places that remind me of others.

 

Full series

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Incidences

Project Incidences, 2016-2018

Incidences, silver print contact on Baryta paper, 11x15cm, 2017

The initial idea was to make images from the litophane : eighteenth century technique that produces bas-relief images on porcelain with a back-lighting system.

I decided to adapt this technique to the 3D printer. Therefore, I create a sample to test the item’s transparency (small white PLA target, 4 levels of thickness). By testing the item I find a singular interest for the thread it produces, once enlarged. The idea is to make images based on this item by silver-based printing.

The verification process is on its way : contact printing, then enlargement. The accident on the item (a tear) opens the possibles field : the verification item becomes the experimentation item. We enter the matter, we discover a landscape. Scale is muddled.

The images have different status : search for a sign (small format), search for a landscape (medium and large formats).