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lumière et ombre se partagent le silence des voix signes suspendus jusqu’à glisser sous tes paupières l’infini se propage profonde division dans un creux indivisible
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englishlight and shadow sharing the silence of voices signs hanging just until they slip under your eyelids infinity spreads deep division in an indivisible hollow.
WAITING FOR FERNAND
22 photographs – B&W - 60cm x 90 cm - Archi plan prints hanging on balconies - installation time 2 months.
2006, an anthropometric notebook is found in a metal cabinet at the Octon town hall by Fabienne Prades of the APPO - Association for the Protection of the Octonnais Heritage,
and it is in this village that my workshop is located.
The notebook is dated 1914 to 1924.
Fernand Besnier, nomad, umbrella mender, day laborer.
Moves about in several French departments (Aveyron, Gard, Hérault, Lot, Tarn, Tarn and Garonne). Over the years, he returns to these same departments.
I follow his path thanks to the visas stamped in his notebook.
Nothing about his life story.
Only stamps, health system card, photographs, measurements, fingerprints.
I feel a strong desire to rehabilitate the memory of this man who died in a ditch on the edge of the village.
Words like a guiding thread:
Solitude / Countryside / Wind / Walking / Cold / Umbrella
And slowly the woman appears, then more clearly, the women.
Those who await, in the hollow of silence, Fernand’s return.
Here it is, the subject is there: working with village women:
a place
a woman
a shepherd's umbrella
an expectation
a desire
Artist's book edition - texts and photographs by the author. 40 copies - sold out
31 pages
39cm x 18cm
thickness: 1 cm
manual inkjet printing - Drawing paper Plexiglas box cover
