Presences
Introduction
"Presences" is, together with "Absences" and "Impressions", a triptych of groups of images which, in a future project, could be conferred to a body of work that I would like to entitle "Resonances".
It is the result of some psycho-geographical drifts carried out in the last twelve months in a chosen environment.
As I wrote in the text "Drifting in my emerging practice":
"Walking is an essential act in solidarity with the practice of drifting; drifting is necessary to fully practice psychogeographic exploration. I am an individualistic drifter. I let myself go, but I am also sensitive and rationally focused on the stimuli that come to me from what I encounter while wandering, be they objects, texts, drawings, people, signs, events, situations or views.".
(from "A diary and reflective summary of research, self-directed project and visual experiments")
Presences
This set of images concerns, in a chosen environment, my personal psychogeographic relationship, as a photographer and an outsider, with living beings, be they humans or animals.
I have experienced that when I arrive in an urban environment, the first stimulus that reaches me comes from the presences of living beings.
It is likely that others have different thought processes than mine and are struck first by the architecture, by the presence of the sea or hills, or a river.
For me, the primary perception of the "genius loci" comes from living beings.
On this perception, I build my sensations and the awareness of being in a place with a precise identity, made up, over time, by those who lead a large part or all of their existence in that place.
I usually don't get too much information about the place I'm going to visit, if not about a minimum of topography, for practical reasons.
I reduce interactions with the environment, those who live there and those who travel through it, to a minimum, to ensure that the environment I perceive is not contaminated by my presence and by the reactions of others to my invasion of their spaces.
Furthermore, my aim is not to be influenced by others and not to condition the flow of my personal perceptions.
This "documentary" activity takes place later, confirming or questioning what I have personally perceived.
This is a method that I would like to apply even more rigorously in the future, to the point of almost not knowing where I am, starting from pure and fresh perceptions and be "invisible".
It's also, a bit like the protagonist of "The man of the crowd" by Edgar Allan Poe, trying to guess the nature of who I meet, behaving like a pure outsider.
