PHOTOGRAPHY / POÉSIE EN MOUVEMENT
We are not jealous of gods
We do not serve them
We do not fear them
But at the risk of our lives
We are stirred to be of their chancy keeping
When they are no more remembered of.
PHOTOGRAPHY / POÉSIE POUR POUVOIR
The title is hexagram n°27. It evokes the act of devouring, swallowing, the junction between the lips, at once a place of meeting, of suture, but also of separation, dichotomy, forever being torn apart. Together but separate.
The contemporary violence of the image is one linked to its transparency, because that is what is expected of it, that everything must be seen. The image (particularly digital) is the realm of this visibility. However, it is also a vanishing point, of beings, secrets, and the ‘unseen’.
The Nightjar's life can be so short that they have a simultaneous awareness of all temporality – they experience all time of their existence in one instant. And when this bird meets the love of his life, he becomes both happy and sad; happy because he loves and is loved, and sad because he knows that it is already over. The female, after laying, broods her eggs in her mouth. When they hatch, she dies.
There is a precise moment in time
When a man reaches the exact middle of his life,
A fraction of a second,
A fleeting bit of time, quicker than a glance,
Quicker than a fit of passion,
Quicker than light.
And a man is aware of this moment.
These images contrast the temptations of the mind and the limits of the body. They dig for a language that reinvents the dark lightning of destiny and celebrate, as an echographia, the struggle for life. Terrifying. Lyrical. A run towards emptiness.
MMXXII © ARNO BOUCHARD