Haruki Murakami, from his book ‘After Dark’,…
“But why should you be interested in me?
Good question. I can’t explain it myself right this moment. But maybe – just maybe – if we start getting together and talking, after a while, something like Francis Lai’s soundtrack music will start playing in the background, and a whole slew of concrete reasons why I’m interested in you will line up out of nowhere. With luck, it might even snow for us.”
The night conceals shapes but reveals imagination. Like when you watch a nicely dressed girl with a summer dress walking in the empty streets of a metropolis. It has a certain melancholy in it, but it is also a filmic moment tensed like a guitar string, with a melody of its own to listen to, or dance to it, and hundreds of possibilities for you to start a new one.
This body of work is street-based photography, supplemented with carefully chosen details. The entire batch of photos may span a few months. I made them from 2010 to 2017, spontaneously capturing frames of a story when I felt like it. A light motif, if I may say so, coincidentally suits this exhibition’s script, which may be found in Haruki Murakami’s book ‘After Dark’, my first read by that Japanese writer.
I found that night photography is not about the place photographed, or a person, or a thing, but about your personal view and state of mind in that moment, and the atmosphere the photos represent. The night is playing with our minds, where, sometimes, hidden objects, people, and ordinary places become extraordinary. As if all that you do transgresses into strange desire, gets its own shape, and intertwines with darkness and sounds of the night. Think of it like developing a film in a darkroom. Close your eyes and listen to the sounds of cars, chattering, and high heels on the streets, on stairs, or, open terraces as you spy on them walking by the street. Steamy bathrooms, the sound of TV noise coming from the room in the middle of the night. It all amplifies in the dark. Then open your eyes, and all of a sudden, it all stops.
The photographs surprised me. I discovered photos again, and again, after I saw them on paper. Mystery and seductiveness of the night motifs, a hint of a dream…
*photos exhibited in the Paris Art Cafe in April 2018.