About the outside pictures; The idea of this series came after the souvenir of Michelangelo Antonioni's movie "Blow up". I was looking for shooting images in a large savage garden in south of France. It was in full summer, but this day the weather was dark and the wind (the Mistral) blew, something like in the famous scene of "Blow Up" in which the photographer catch the incident in the park. The place in which I worked was half wild and civilized with paths, bench, ping-pong table and barbecue; this kind of space I like, because it's unclassified. I took the first photos in the spirit of "Blow Up", far from the model with a lot of space around her, in order to oblige the onlooker to make an effort to find her in the luxuriance of the nature. In my studio work, the model is really the center of the image and the background is only to make the girl in value. In this new series, the cause is probably more the nature than the human, or the human mix up with nature. No more fetish accessories, only high heels shoes, which is unseemly in this place! The Images look like extracts from a film (still images), part of a story, but never an important moment. Generally the photographer shoot the "decisive" moment (the famous decisive instant after Cartier Bresson) but these pictures often represented the moment before or after the event. They are waiting moments more than action moments. We don't know if the scene is real or a fiction, if the moment is dangerous or not, if there is pleasure of fear! We are always between the terror and the mood. Balanced between two feelings, one good (the desire) and the other bad (fear). Germans have a good word to speak about this situation: Unheimlich. It is what is familiar and disturbing at the same time, and which create a feeling of faintness. (See the book of S. Freund about Unheimliche). These images could be a little bit humoristic but it is humor of burlesque parades with strange animals and freaks (don't forget we are always between fear and desire). Familiar characters but completely improbable in this place. They are like forgotten here! Most of these photos look like amateur photos. Looking at my pictures, I feel there is always wind in these images; it's moving too much! (Wind is very present in the works of Antonioni too!). Pictures are often fuzzy or moved, the framing is unseemly, with shadows around: The image is like a hole. Technically, shootings are with 6x6 and Polaroid cameras on black and white films. All the prints are by myself on baryt papers. The tints, from yellow pink to orange for high lights, blue green for grey and warm blacks, are all natural and not the result of chemical process. The best way to look at my photos is under artificial lights and not daylight, because this work (all of my works) is to be seen in secret.
Gilles Berquet, Clamart, 27 of November 2005
