"Natures", by Jean-Luc Chapin

Exhibition sale from November 24, 2017 to January 13, 2018
Original photographs accompanied by texts by Jean-Marie Laclavetine

"This is how the landscape is born. In the inactinic darkness of the laboratory, the photographer makes indecipherable gestures under the black mass of the enlarger. He sprinkles light, forces the shadows and the lines. The image has not been given, it is taken. He tears from the inert matter forms that begin to dance, that burst with all their strength, that give up the ghost. The photographer's real work is accomplished in these nocturnal and solitary moments, in these silent incantations around the trays, in these formulas that accompany each print, scribbled in the margins . To draw on the contrasts, to work on a detail by passing the hands under the shower of light, to spread seconds, to pass the sun through a sieve, on a detail of the frame to make the shadow spring forth in a corner, to mask, to hold. Each print is a unique moment. To fight, to find the ideal gesture. What he finds sweet, I find sad, what he finds dense I see opaque, what I feel light he considers thick, what seems aerial to me dissolves weakly for him, the subtlety of his gaze responds to the naivety of mine. It takes hours to make the image give up its soul, for the tiny sparkle on the foliage to appear, for the reflection of an eddy to suddenly shine with a disturbing tenderness, for the branch to become liquid in the liquid sky. Tirelessly, he spreads the pinches of light, caresses time, passes the hands in the column of light to hold back a veil of shadow. The image comes, the image is there."

Jean-Luc Chapin

Born in 1959, Jean-Luc Chapin lives in Bordeaux and works on the themes of landscape and the relationship with nature. A film photographer above all, he asserts the relationship with time and matter that this practice imposes.

Jean-Marie Laclavetine is a novelist and editor at Éditions Gallimard.

Muriel Barbery is the author of Une gourmandise, L'Élégance du hérisson and, more recently, La Vie des Elfes, published by Gallimard.

SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dubern, une maison bordelaise : 1894-2014 (with Pierre Chavot and Laurent Croizier, 2013)
Descente au paradis (with Jean-Marie Laclavetine, 2011)
Mérignac : la ville élargie (with Didier Arnaudet, 2011)
Saisons du Médoc : une année à Sociando-Mallet (with Jean Lacouture, Jean-Paul Kauffmann et al., 2010)