Q: I understand that before becoming a photographer, you were a running trainer. To what extent do you think that this activity has had an impact on your perspective about dance? Have you been able to confirm certain specific differences between a moving body and a dancing body?
A: Yes, before delving into photography I was at first an athlete since 1976 (400m runner in Marathon), but also a coach for 17 years. This experience has developed my sense of observation. In athletics -as in dance- we search for an accurate movement as well as a certain gestural perfection, which in sport will allow the athlete to improve their performance, and in dance will bring aesthetics. The approaches, even if they are very close in their implementation (training, repetition), can also be very different in their objectives. At the same time, the two worlds and lifestyles of athletes and dancers are quite similar: the strictness and discipline that they induce are omnipresent. I confess I was not particularly disoriented during my first confrontations with dance.
Q: You have chosen Andres Lejona as your teacher. What part of his work called your attention? Which are the influnces of his teachings in your current works?
A: For Andres Lejona, I was a candidate to attend a six-month workshop (which in the end lasted nine months) in creative photography with him as leader; and I was selected with five other photographers among various applicants. It was a great satisfaction for me, because I knew and I loved the artistic sensibility that emanated from his photographs, mainly his portraits, but also his sometimes displaced gaze on the things around us. I refer to him because he is the one who taught me to look at things differently, to look beyond what is shown in the photographs (the off-cameras, the narrative power of the series). This training in 2011 was my real start in the photo: thanks to it I was able to structure my series better. I did not improve from a technical point of view (technical photos do not interest me!!), but it was some sort of philosophically rich experience.
Q: Speaking of technicality, what role do you believe it has both in dance and in photography? Do you think it facilitates expression, givin tools to the interpreter, or do you think it can also involve certain limitations or expressive frontiers?
A: The role of technique remains relevant. It is a way to acquire the basics (both in photography and in dance) to the mastery of these ways of expression. However, we must also know how to break free and not retreat into some thing already achieved. To summarize, the technique is needed to get to express feelings, but in any case it should -in my opinion- be a substitute for emotion. For expample, in the case of photography, I prefer a picture with its imperfections but which will provoke an emotion, rather than a flat perfect image with no other interest than an aesthetic point of view. |
Q: With regards to bodies, you have worked both with athletes and dancers from different styles and cultures. Do you believe that bodies and body language are mainly shaped according to genetic inheritance, the culture they are submerged in or the types of practices they make?
A: What I have seen over my experiences in sport and dance photography is that every individual has their own body language, their own identity. So saying whether it is linked to the experiences, lessons learned, inheritance, there I am unable to answer. Each dancer moves differently. Obviously gestures sometimes repeat specialities based on jazz, contemporary, classic, but how they express themselves is clear when it comes to improvisation. I'm not talking about choreographed parts and dancers working on some written pieces, being only interpreters. That is why, even if I often work with the same dancers, I also like to discover new ones as they enrich my work and force me to adapt to their style and force them to find out their true identity as a dancer. It is very introspective!
Q: When choosing a topic for your photographs, do you follow your dreams or little obsessions, you get inspired by the dancers' worlds, or is it something that varies from series to series?
A: To what influences me in building my projects, there are many things that can be (usually) a place, an emotion, social issues, literature, the importance of the body in our existence... it is multiple and endless. Everything can influence me but it is often the personality of the dancers what inspires my photos, given they are the ones who nourish my work. The idea that creation goes through another person's body is indispensable to me!
Q: You have mentioned that "the importance of the body in our existence" is one of your major sources of inspiration. Do you believe that modern culture has somehow neglected the body? Or that -on the contrary- we are rediscovering the body as a way o expression, thanks to a dissolution of certain taboos?
A: Our society attaches great interest in the representation of the body: that can be seen especially in the advertising medium. I think that the human being is a combination of body and mind, beyond the body, it is mainly the identity of each person which inspires me. The ownership of the body has become in recent years a phenomenon of the society, it is clear that many people are currently looking to strengthen their identities by giving them an artistic sense through tattoos, piercings... In Arts and Culture, for the past twenty years the human being has again become a central subject, so -as far as I know- I do not think it has had to do with the lifting of taboos.
Q: Going through your work, some of the series which particularly called my attention were those with the two dancers who interact as if they were sisters. What was the original aim of these series, and what do they inspire you when watching them?
A: So for this series there is a story: in fact, actresses Marie and Julie Barthelemy are actually sisters; but, in spite of the fact that they are both professional dancers, for various reasons they had never had the opportunity to dance together. We started with the idea of a session around the games of their childhood but as it was difficult to transcribe into images their relationship, we had the idea of attaching them through their hair in order to materialize their filial bond. For informational purposes, this series has just been selected to be exhibited and presented at the 18th International Biennial of the image in Nancy (France) in May 2016. |