Black and white transforms the vision, leads us beyond the reality offered. Thinking in black and white forces one to stop and consider the composition, its lines of force, its contrasts. This is how the photographer’s eye and the graphic designer’s composition of space come together in me. For me, being a photographer is akin to moving around. Armed with the camera, I can sketch the visual while trying to maintain the balance of the constructions that take place before my eyes. It’s a matter of the moment. Nothing has been planned, decided. It is a pure piece of instant torn from time, from light. And finally, as with etching, it is the chemistry that reveals the chosen moment with all its essential and unique qualities.
François Delandre
François Delandre’s photographic itinerary shows that photography neither reveals nor paints reality, but transforms and transfigures it. His artistic path is a call to interpret the world as architecture, urbanism, nature, recomposed by the eye, an initiatory journey through the depth of fields, the rigour of lines, towards a twilight universe…
Often, his eye captures and isolates an element, a geometric construction, a luminosity. This cutting up of elements, buildings, landscapes metamorphoses them into timeless sculptures. These captured elements are rendered to our contemplation like plastic works, strange, aesthetic works of art, as if suspended in time. In this universe where charcoal blacks predominate, the brightness contributes to creating an impression of out of focus, out of time, out of movement.
This pause invites the viewer to contemplate and to follow a dreamlike path towards unknown, strange and immobile lands. The patina of time is rendered by transparencies, chiaroscuro, variations of black and white, by the lines inscribed on the image itself. Like an illumination, these scratches connect photography to other arts: engraving, drawing, handicraft…
These Memories from Beyond the Earth give us the poetic calligraphy of a look, taking us to a place where everything is rest, silence and serenity.
Marie-Christine Labat
Solo Exhibitions
2012 : Galerie l’Atelier Valencin, Paris.
2009 : Galerie l’Atelier Valencin, Paris.
2009 : Galerie Bruno Hébert, Paris.
2003 : Journées du Patrimoine, Hôtel de Ville et Centre Culturel, La Courneuve.
Group Exhibitions
2015 : Galerie La Production Autre, Parcours photographique Are you experiencing ?, 8e édition, Le Havre.
2013 : Parcours photographique Are you experiencing ?, 7e édition, Le Havre (invité d’honneur, Bernard Plossu).
2012 : Galerie Charlet Photographies, Fotofever, Bruxelles.
2012: Cabinet d’architecture Bettinger-Desplanques, Are you experiencing ?, 4e édition, Le Havre.
2010 : Festival de Pescara, Italie
2009 : Parcours photographique Are you experiencing ?, 3e édition, Le Havre.
2009 : Charlet-photographies, Salon Europ’art 09, Genève.
2009 : Charlet-photographies, Rencontres Photographiques, Arles.
2009 : Charlet-photographies, Festival International de Pingyao, Chine.
2009 : Little Big Gallery, Paris.
2008 : Charlet-photographies, Galerie du Centre Iris, Paris.
2007 : Rencontres Leica, Espace Commines, Paris.
2006 :”Art Photo Collectif”, Salon Comparaisons 2006 (dans le cadre d’Art en Capital), Grand Palais, Paris.
2003 : 2ème Salon de l’Image “Mémoires & identités”, Romainville
Press
Site du magazine Vis à Vis International, octobre 2008.
Première série des “Photogravées”, Le Monde 2, août 2007.
Commands
Journées du Patrimoine, La Courneuve, 2003
Agencies and websites
Millenium Images, Londres
Contact
62, rue du Mont-Cenis 75018 Paris
01 42 54 87 23 / 06 42 13 72 77
frdelandre@laposte.net