Visage et corps: Salvador

Le Jardin (Duratrans/ light box) 

inspired by the Garden of Earthly Delights of Hieronymus Bosch

Can photography represent reality more fully than a painting? 

And what of dreams - which medium expresses them best? 

Steeped in the language of art that has come before him, Jean-Jacques Salvador's approach to photography is highly technical and modern yet converses fluently with the masters of old. His photography now secures the fleeting constructions of the human mind the way Bosch did with paint - and painstaking method.  Modern faces, modern bodies inhabit exploratory themes that have not finished to claim our attention.

Têtes antiques

In a visual grammar where the classics are not dead, beware, Medusa looks back at us.

Galerie Lelia Mordoch 

more information at Catherine Valogne

see also my previous article, here

Lallemant: Rolling the ball

photo Plaisir de France

Captivating Lallemant. There - I thought I’d get the decorator’s name in right away, because he’s new to me and though I don't know much about him, I’m suddenly very enthusiastic. Maybe it's because he's a little mysterious still.

And maybe I'm making a rash judgement basing my interest on very little. It all began with this one appealing salon that first drew me in with its ringed rug.  How many times have I skimmed this picture imagining the promise of  our universe calm, classically arranged and beautifully colored at my feet? Then came the scanty bits I discovered about Lallemant on the internet; a little knowledge is a dangerous thing?

This apartment is the only example I have seen of his interior work. The ceiling is not high but that’s not a problem here. I like the way the lighting for bookshelves is integrated into the neat overhanging coffer which continues with intelligent shelving on the sides; a coffer alone on the ceiling would have cut down the impression of height. The rug expands the space too. Everything is in its place, ship shape. The theme is astronomical: metal spheres are used as supports for the coffee table;  the mirror frame is painted with planets and is perfectly aligned to the contours of the globes over the mantel; there's an armillary sphere next to the desk on the right. (Click to enlarge.)

photo Plaisir de France

This is the dining room that faces the above space and repeats the rounded shapes in the rug, table and chairs. A collection of antique ceramics occupies the end wall. With simplicity, very defined interests are indicated.

I have been wondering if this apartment on the avenue Montaigne belonged to an astonomer, an explorer, or very chic astrologer - maybe Yaguel Didier in a past life.  What I have discovered of Robert Lallemant is that he is famous for ceramics (which explains the importance given to their display) but I find nothing elsewhere about his interior decoration work. 

photo Drouot

lamp La belle aventure  photo Artnet

In 1923, reports Ceramique 1900, "he buys a small workshop of "bleus de Sèvres" at 5 passage d'Orléans in the 13th district of Paris, which he later moved to Quai d'Auteuil. He starts then, with the help of 

his wife, a very avant-gardiste production. For each of his models he makes a 

drawing then a plaster on which he keeps working until he gets a perfect shape; then he makes a mould." His early works of 'mecanical faience' often have images of France, proverbs, popular songs, sport, history, geography, myth.... the style is charming and often resembles the work of illustrators Jean-Emile Laboureur or Charles Martin.  He is one of the rare artists of this medium, along with Jean Luce, to have created ceramic works in the true spirit of modern creation of the 1920s.

See more examples here.

photo Christie's vase 1930

His geometric models show the same artistic preoccupations as in the top picture.

Christie’s biographical notice says,

A pupil of the ceramicist Raoul Lachenal during the early 1920s, Robert Lallemant worked mainly with faience, exhibiting his early independant work at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs and the Salon d'Automne. He swiftly received positive reviews, which in turn led to an exhibition at the Berheim Jeune gallery in 1929, alongside Djo-Bourgeois, Pierre Barbe and the Martel brothers, where he concentrated on works in ceramic.

A founding member of the UAM in 1929, Lallemant contributed furniture, combining wood, metal and glass, to the inaugural exhibition at the Salon de Marsan the following year. In 1933 Lallemant joined his father-in-law's public works company, and in so doing abandoned his successful artistic career.

photo galerie Patrick Seguin

We do see armillary inspiration in the period as demonstrated by this famous example by Jean Royère made in 1940. Lallemant stopped his design career in 1933. Maybe his table inspired Royère?

photo Christie's

photo Drouot

photo ebay

photo Christie's 

Spheres and round shapes show up frequently.

photo source: livre-rare-book

During WW II, he was for a time in charge of the military service artistique and he also sailed regularly with the Marine Française where he documented life aboard ship with uncommon artistry.

photo by Lallemant at galerie Verdeau

Other photographs attest to his travels through Africa. 

We don't know why he chose to give up an enormously successful career in ceramics, but it looks like the themes of the apartment above and the ceramics I have chosen to illustrate this post may have demonstrated his own interests and desire to explore other horizons.
Robert Lallemant lived from 1902 to 1954, and left traces of a short but well-filled life.

3 things combined

The year is getting off to a nice start. I always like to find a calendar for the kitchen that will make me happy all year long. This one is called Les chats en France. Photographer, Rachel McKenna, originally from New Zealand also shares a love of
three things dear to me - France, interiors and cats.

in French

 Her book of the same name is especially delightful - because 12 pictures may not be enough to satisfy...

in English

and it is always interesting to see the cover choices for the different editions.


The author's site .

Photographer Jean-Jacques Salvador

Watchmen

Jean-Jaques Salvador is a photographer who goes much, much further than the view found in his objective. With dazzling use of combined techniques, he manipulates the quarry of his hunter's eye to achieve a blushless beauty that isn't all innocence. He plans, interprets, arranges and associates before and after aiming his camera for results that always fascinate.

INTERVIEW

You make reference of several artists in your work  – Watchmen is dedicated to photographer R.E.Meatyard. What inspires you most, the outside world or the imaginary world ? How do you work?

Often I am inspired by works of the past (painting and photography) to create my photographs.
When I respond to a painting, its beauty and what it evokes, stimulate my imagination
and give me energy to express myself in photography. At other times, it's the meeting of a place or a person that acts as this stimulus to make a photo. To sum up, the works of the past permit me to conceive a new deductive image. On the other hand, the meeting with the outside world sets off a more spontaneous non- premeditated process.

Watchmen

These examples of the artist's pairings form what he terms "sociable" diptychs.

To look at your site, your art often seems to allude to a story. What is the place of narrative in your work?

An important aspect of photography is its interplay with the real. By its nature photography records the real mechanically. Now, to express my own sensitivity, my ideas, I need to breath into it my way of seeing, so I divert fom the real in an obvious way. I reformulate it. Reality remains relative: a work is interesting if it shows a marked aspect of reality  Even when poetic, a work that touches me and makes me passionate, tells me something. It provokes sensations and emotions. It makes memories come rushing back as well as thoughts that had been buried. In this way, every work, even abstract, remains narrative.

 

Watchmen

Narration remains the method of introduction, or of invitation that seems to me the most accessible way to approach a work - and the most instuctive. It may not be the most universal way, nor the most immediate, and it's not the least perverse, but narration is a key that allows us to receive a work.

If a work is to touch us, it must speak to the senses. Narration is a way to open the perceptions to reach the inside world. The poetic, the beautiful concern the appearance of a work.

Watchmen

Some works have a staging that is apparent, others undergo a technical treatment which is very elaborate. You do not seem very interested in pictures  "from life."

The technical treatment is there to distill the image content and to make it more present to our senses. It contributes to the pleasure of seeing and to being fascinated by an image. There is a capacity of enchantment that has to seize the spectator in the world of images. Each photo receives the technical treatment that I find the best adapted to it. I have taken many photographs from life, perhaps there are too few on my site. What doesn't interest me in the life shots is the documentary- the anecdotic. Photography is the medium I have chosen, but the 'photographer's good eye' isn't enough to express myself.

Tarot

What made you choose the subject of tarot cards?

It was a fashion designer who introduced me to the Tarot. There is practically no complete photographic version of a full deck of 78 traditional Tarot cards. I was immediately captivated by their iconographic richness and by the initiatory journey the game proposes. Provoking thought through a sort of game is certainly a good thing. So I oriented my interpretation to the “path of life” aspect which asks a question with each card and I used a single character who undergoes a metamorphosis from card to card.

Connexes

You are clearly an excellent photographic technician. Could your share a bit about the multiple techniques that you use?

Photography is historically linked to its different inventions. Since the beginning of the 19th century, these inventions have shaken up each other, being drawn by the marvels of this new medium supposed to supplant painting and by the lure of profit. In fact, there are numerous different processes of obtaining a photograph. The range of renderings offered is just wide as for printmaking . I draw from these possibilities to find the rendering that interests me.

 When I created Tarots, I observed the icons of Andreï Roublev and I chose to make these images in black and white treated with gold then tinted again with gelatin.For the architectural series Connexes, I chose to make the images with platinum which permits finding the grain of stone and concret.

Moons

I made Moons with Ambrotype techniques which allowed me to obtain a the silver mirror finish I found well adapted to a representation of the great night star.

Jean-Jacques Salvador is currently working on a book which will accompany the exhibit of 

“Maisons Lecaron” which is scheduled for next September. Next year he will be part of an exhibit organized by Anne Cartier-Bresson which addresses alternative photographic processes.

Many more examples of the photographer's work

can be found on his generously illustrated  site,  Jean-Jacques Salvador.

Lecaron Architecture as seen by Jean-Jacques Salvador

Toulaho

If you look at the architect Jacques-Emile Lecaron's website you'll find factual images of the houses he designed over a period of time in the the rue des Fougères, Clamart as well as some of his other notable buildings. Photographer, Jean-Jacques Salvador, has taken these already imaginative constuctions and gone a step further giving them another dimension. An interesting example of one art beckoning to another.
(Click on the photos, they are best viewed enlarged.)

Toulaho is Lecaron's own residence/agency. A contracted form of  "tout là-haut", it's name simply means that it is the house at the top of the street.  If its glass block facade makes a display case for the goings-on inside, there is also a classicly contoured house of green such as a child might draw - square + triangle - that has been encrusted for the dwelling's more intimate spaces. It's a little cabin in the woods that appears to float in the reflection of the trees, or then, some see it as a cuckoo clock fixed to a wall.

Lecaron explains,
"Je l’ai rêvée maison libre, maison qui vole, maison dans les arbres.”

I dreamed of it as a house that was free, a house that flies, a house in the trees.

one of the 7 houses in Clamart

Reflections, shadows, and views through the windows show inhabitants, intimate memories and passing events. Salvador's photos are rarely just interesting angles and light. He reworks the scene, associating it with the  pieces needed to complete the puzzle. There's somtimes a breath of wind, but what blows there?

Take a closer look.

Derrière le Miroir

Where does the the photographer's fantasy take up and the architects's leave off ?

Jacques-Emile Lecaron conceived each architectural design in keeping with the personalities of their owners. Salvador then set up the occupants in the houses according to each individual story.  Both architect and photographer are inspired by the universe of fairy tales as a souce of wonder, mystery, sometimes of fear.

 Tombeau de l'oeil oiseau

This truncated column, also designed by Lecaron,  is a control site for polution levels of the river Seine

located on the Ile Saint-Germain. Salvador's photo consecrates the monument.

Izis, forgotten photographer

The Hôtel de Ville de Paris is exhibiting 250 works of  Izraël Biderman, known as Izis, until the 29th of March.  As part of the humanist movement in photography in the 50s, he was well-known enough to be part of the group show Five French Photographers in  New York's MoMA, along with Brassaï, Doisneau, Ronis and Cartier-Bresson.

His subjects are similar to the other photographer's images of  Paris with its bridges plunging into mist, lover's embraces, faces in the crowd. A compilation of his photographs, Paris des rêves, was immensely successful when it was published in 1950. In it, forty-five writers, among them Louise de Vilmorin, Jean Cocteau and André Breton composed poems to go with the photos. He was the only photographer that Marc Chagall would work with and his poetic vision permitted him to work in tandem wth Jacques Prévert and Colette as well.

Izis was also well-known as a staff photographer at  Paris- Match for 20 years.

Strange that this body of work has been mostly forgotten until now. It may be because Izis died in 1980 just before an interest for the after war years was revived?

If the tragic loss of most of his family during World War II left him to bear guilt with a sometimes tormented artistic vision . . .   

there is a lasting tenderness in his images of Paris.

for  photo gallery , visit the Mairie de Paris

Source: Izis, photographe du spleen  Le Monde