Unportraits

The next day, hurried passersby walked across the field of printed images dampened by a persistent drizzle. The thin washed-out paper warped and even tore beneath their footsteps. Some faces were partially erased, others shattered, distorted, became unrecognizable. Those who had grimaced for the camera to compose themselves now appeared pensive, astonished, questioning, anxious or panicked and directed towards something other than themselves.

I recalled painters who depicted the social success of merchants and bankers by placing them in opulent interiors ; princely commissions intended to display and project power ; Ingres’s portrait of Monsieur Bertin, which captures France’s rising bourgeoisie : through the person represented, the portrait strives to attain a dimension that transcends the individual.
At the extreme, it constructs a fiction: using the lighting style of cinema’s golden age, Studio Harcourt creates an image that takes precedence over the subject being photographed. The portrait invents and elaborates rather than merely recording reality. It is a form of communication, advertising, social validation, even propaganda.
But what does it reveal about the person? In other words, does the portrait truly exist?
Is it a coincidence that it is defined by a close-up of the face and a vertical frame orientation?

Thus is born the “Desportraits” series : not portraits of individuals, but a court of miracles populated by figures akin to the heads painted by Francis Bacon and characters of Quino, highlights dimensions within us that transcend us : the fear or even anguish, confronting the inexplicable and the uncontrollable of which the great examples are nothingness and chaos upon which our psychological selves are built. Each portrait ceased to belong to a specific individual to evoke the worst universal that could befall us : the extreme imbalance that plunges one into a downward spiral of destruction and death. And yet, conversely, this underscores the imperative need for balance. Each one points back to an inner self, becoming an expression of human nature, portrait of the human of all times and of the humanity of today caught in the snares of uncertainty..