Enchantement

The photographs of Florence Chevallier are like looking into a multi-faceted crystal ball. As if drawn by an unseen hand, they appear, only to disappear once more. They do not allow the observer to “grasp” them or to focus on them. At the expense of commitment, they merge into diptychs which only appear to be unconnected. Details are displaced, polyphonic spectra are created. “These pictures encircle a unique but absent picture of a more complex truth than that which can be represented” (Regis Durand). Duration and movement become a part of the reproduction, as on a contact print, but hover between narration and cinematic reverie. Still photographs of the hortus conclusus which she has created show lovers as prisoners of their own portraits. Stretched out on cold, moss-covered stone, they lie, admittedly hand-in-hand – but can they conquer together the coldness of the grave? Happiness has always abandoned them at the very moment captured by the photograph; they have been driven apart by the very thing which brought them together. The diptychs which form a part of the series “Les Philosophes” confront bodies with fragments of nature. In a dialogue with the cycle of nature, however, the fragile character of their existence is revealed, painful and at the same time inevitable. If another picture is added, the trinity destroys the dialogue. The new focal point magnetises the sides, reconciling them as it does so. Finally, Florence Chevallier overcomes the edges of the pictures as well, fragments the photographs and allows them to fluctuate as if in orbit. “In order to be able to see better, you have to adopt a different point of view. You must allow your gaze to travel instead offocussing on one fixed element.” The photographer also asserts that even its absence will give an eloquent explanation of a picture. This artistic verse also leads on to the canon of man as a part of the whole, occupying nature because he is reflected by nature and at the same time enchanted by her charme…