As I told you in a previous article, photographing artists, and in particular artists creating, is one of my favorite fields.
There is something special about this type of photography…. Each photograph is a moment captured and immortalized. But in artistic creation, there is something physically untouchable, something elusive other than in the creative act.
When an artist creates, whether in his studio or on stage, we enter in this kind of zone, this space-time that no longer belongs to us, where suddenly, nothing has any importance other than the creation itself. There is no longer a physical relationship of social and ethnic origins, gender, identity. There is a new reality being created. A new temporary reality, where we forget everything, including ourselves, and especially and paradoxically, our physical envelope.
Photographing an artist in his area is to access a part of himself that he would not reveal in any other context, a vulnerable part, without games and social roles. A pure part. A part that could be called his “true self”.
Photographing an artist in his area is to allow him to see himself in this moment so pure and ephemeral. It is to allow him to become aware of that moment when he is no longer conscious of himself.
Photographing an artist in his area, is in my opinion, the moment when he is aesthetically the most interesting, because, crossing through this creative act, no longer belonging to himself, he can no longer wear a mask.
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Cover photo: Medine at Cabaret Underworld © 2013 Jessica Valoise
Jessica VALOISE