Biography
"I live and work in Paris.
I began exhibiting my photographs in 2008 and received the "Coup de Coeur" award from the Centre Iris in 2010. Since then, I have showcased my series at multiple photography festivals and in both group and solo exhibitions at Hotel de Sauroy (Paris), Little Big Galerie (Paris), Galerie Domus Reattu (Arles), Galerie XII (Paris), and Galerie Ibasho (Antwerp). My series have been published in various magazines and websites such as FotoMagazin, HuffingtonPost, Musee Magazine, and L'Oeil de la Photographie. My photographs are in numerous private collections across Europe and the United States. In harmony with my photographic approach, I also create mobiles, delicate sculptures based on the idea of a fragile and dreamlike balance between shapes and colors. A mobile is like a photograph."
Artist Statement
“There’s a crack in everything, that’s how light gets in.” — Leonard Cohen, Anthem
In the rhythm of our often overly repetitive, digital, daily lives, what space have we given to photography as a form of artistic expression? Has the medium truly been reduced to either Instagram selfies or conceptual photography?
I passionately believe that each of us experience visual moments in our daily lives, emotional shocks that change our perception of the world and of photographic art. “There’s a crack in everything, that’s how light gets in”. Absolutely. I believe in the cracks in the mask that is our daily experience. That there are spaces, moments that go unnoticed wherein light and beauty manifest, small culminations that can feel otherworldly, hidden yet somehow omnipresent.
The finite moment when this miracle happens allows us all to experience non-moments we live each day with the vibration of an emotion, the notion of artistic balance, a door opening to something wonderful. Freeing our perceptions of the world allows us to see the art that surrounds us, art that is accessible to all of us, popular art, art that precedes concepts, that touches the soul, that happens suddenly and without explanation.
In 1950, Aaron Siskind, following Callahan, evoked this approach which I describe as popular ”Thus, rocks are sculpted forms; a section of common decorative ironwork, springing rhythmic shapes; fragments of paper sticking to a wall, a conversation piece. And these forms, totems, masks, figures, shapes, images must finally take their place in the tonal field of the picture and strictly conform to their space environment. [...] What is the subject matter of this apparently very personal world? It has been suggested that these shapes and images are underworld characters, the inhabitants of that vast common realm of memories that have gone down below the level of conscious control. It may be they are.” (Credo, 1950)
My project centers on revealing through my photographs these artistic fissures and lifting them high above the control of consciousness, to unveil that which is wonderful and harmonious living hidden in the folds of our material lives.
But of course, it is virtually impossible to think about photography without thinking about time. The printed image represents a brief, precise point on the continuum of time in which we live when we press the shutter; the unique property of photography is its ability to freeze time, to capture emotions in a singular decisive moment. As Roland Barthes wrote, photography “mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially”, where in essence he refers to “what was”.
My ambition is to extend the temporal field of photography into the future. To combine a sense of time relative to both the object being photographed (“what was”) and time experienced by the viewer (“what I see”), moving as one towards a new dimension: the “what will be”.
By photographing recurring artistic appearances that occur in my own daily life, in the sky, on a pavement, in a glass, I want to believe that I am simultaneously revealing those that emerge in the daily lives of the viewer. The question is less about a decisive moment as the “things” I photograph are by nature, by their very essence, immutable, common and repetitive. It is their appearances accumulated over time that transforms their image into a photographic project. It is the universality of their continued presence that I want to believe can transform an unextraordinary life moment into an artistic hope. “What was” – “What I see” – “What will be”.
We will all still see flocks of birds, subway passengers, stains on the walls. It is my hope, however, that the photographs presented to you here today change what you live tomorrow, in how you experience the continuum of images in your own lives; and urge you towards finding artistic emotion in a few of the cracks — and a renewed sense of wonder.
Re-enchanting the world through photography.
Francois Laxalt