Olivier Pasquiers

"It was after studying science that Olivier Pasquiers turned to photography, because he was looking for a human contact that he could not find in the test tubes." The camera makes you legitimate to ask for entering a factory, a house, a workshop, explains the one who confesses to be a local talker. I am not a travel photographer, I like to take my images from a distance with a handshake. we discuss, we take the images later. "

After an individual practice, he joined the team at Bar Floréal in 1991. Neither really an agency, nor really collective, this association, which took the name of a café in the Belleville district, was founded in 1985 by photographers and graphic designers on questions of exchange and use of the image. . Bar Floréal's approach could be summed up as follows: people give us time, we give them an image that we bring to them, which will make it possible to make another image, perhaps more difficult, which will force the person to engage more. . »Part of a humanist tradition, the Floréal bar has worked for associations such as Secours populaire or as part of urban renewal initiatives. Mandated by Anru, Olivier Pasquiers documented the demolition of the Renoir bar with André Lejarre, in the Cité des 4,000 in La Courneuve. The work lasted nearly a year, the time necessary to be accepted by the inhabitants of the social park. “It was a really tough place, remembers Olivier Pasquiers. It took six months to meet people, build networks, meet associations. We photographed only part of the 350 dwellings, while trying to restore a representative corpus. "

The photographer is not fooled by the ambiguities of this highly institutional device: “We arrive mandated by the HLM office or by the City, in all cases by the public authorities. Whether we like it or not, this context generates a balance of power and types of relationships with the inhabitant that constitute our framework, with its constraints. “Assigned to sensitive areas, Pasquiers sometimes finds himself dreaming of leaving the suburbs of the Republic to offer a more complete portrait of society. “I would like to photograph a city as a whole, with all its inhabitants, rich or poor, to show the diversity of its neighborhoods, but it is an order that has never been passed to me. "Notice to amateurs and enlightened patrons!"

Olivier NAMIAS

Born in 1960, Olivier Pasquiers has been a photographer since 1988. He has published several books combining texts and photographs. He works at a distance respectful of people and the situations they live in, affirming that photographing is a way of being among men and women, of looking at them, listening to them, waiting for them, approaching them, of them. to greet, and to have only to try to translate this confidence in fragments, in glances. “I am a photographer for the relationship with others, to exchange feelings, atmospheres, memories, books,…, photographs also with those I meet. ".

Member of the late “Le bar Floréal.photographie" between 1991 and 2015, when the collective disappeared. He is now installed in his own workshop le CHANTIER PERMANENT in Bois Colombes (92)

He often works in collaboration with writers, storytellers, other photographers, graphic designers or humanitarian associations. His work has been the subject of numerous personal and group exhibitions.