A 48-year-old self-taught photographer, I have always been passionate about working with the human body in general, and women's bodies in particular.
The photographic series "UN CORPS DANS LE DÉCOR" is a project of nude self-portraits started at the end of 2020.
The series was built up over time and the shots, the use of my body as part of the decor, naked, without artifice and without cheating, being the common thread in all these images.
Sometimes comical, sometimes morbid, sometimes poetic, these photographs use a very neutral, pure, almost original nudity.
The addition of this body in the heart of a setting that could perfectly well be self-sufficient makes it possible to question the place of humans in their environment, whether it be urban or in the middle of nature.
This exercise is very powerful on a personal level, both for the dose of adrenaline that each outdoor nude session provokes, and for the intense relationship with the body that it generates for me, who is initially a rather modest person...
Simplicity and sincerity are the pillars of this work (and self-mockery, obviously, too!).
I almost always work alone, with very little equipment: an X100T and a camera stand, a remote control. Being light, fast and adaptable is one of the keys to success in this work where I have to act without being spotted, sometimes in public places.
The project is accompanied by texts and poems that I write afterwards, inspired by the emotion felt during or after the shooting, and sometimes by anecdotes linked to the making of.
In this project, the "making of" is indeed a perpetual source of emotions: fear often, tears sometimes, and above all laughter all the time!
For each photo, I have to find the right place, the right pose, the right moment.
But for each photo, nothing ever goes as planned, of course...
The most frequent laughter comes from the surprise of a totally inopportune arrival: a jogger right in the field, while I had checked́ that the beach was deserted, 15 soldiers advancing, their Famas in hand, while I was starting to undress in a deserted Orly, the headlights of a suburban train when I was dangerously pitching on the rails!
The sensations, too, give way to bursts of laughter: the skeleton's arm that suddenly falls into my hand, the light bulbs of the electric garland that burn my back, the brambles hidden under the water when I sink my feet into the Seine, the cold, above all, everywhere, all the time, that makes me shiver and murmur as I get dressed, "but why am I doing this to myself, why why why why!
Breathless, heart pounding, covered in bruises, scabs, skin reddened by the cold, I very often end my sessions laughing like a kid, amazed at having dared́, like when we rang the doorbell as a child, coming out of school, and immediately ran away ...
This project is perhaps, also, that of a dirty kid in fact!
But it allows you to have fun, in any case, madly. To laugh at ourselves, at events. And we need it, so much! I hope you will take as much pleasure in discovering it as I did in implementing it.