Montier Photo Festival

Presentation

Montier Photo Festival

Bertrand BASCOULES

  France

  http://www.bertrandbascoules.com

  Bertrand BASCOULES – amateur naturalist photographer – Passionate hiker, with curiosity unchanged since my youngest age. Photography has become a reflection of this curiosity that has always animated me. It became a guide, which I consider as an organism, seeking in the material technical answers to my aesthetic expectations. I cannot explain this fascination for world living system, but my artistic approach is clear, I am convinced that the truth of a picture will be worth all the speeches, I found how to make me understand and how to share my passion. The embodiment of this intention to be at the point of balance between aesthetics and truth makes that my pictures can be both document and art.

Exposition

 

VIVANT (Alive), my project: VIVANT is a point of view about animal life. It is a provocation, an expected face to face. A collection of the living, out of frame and out of context. It is an invitation to curiosity and emotion, a proposal to pay attention to the incredible diversity of LIVING. The intention : I work to fix the natural complexity of living, its almost-symmetry of forms and its imperfections. The term «artistic neodocumentary» perfectly translates the intention of my approach, as a passionate naturalist, I am seeking the perfect balance between aesthetics and truth.The exhibition VIVANT is a cloud of 20 photographs where each photo is singular but where the whole is merged into a common aesthetic, since the fruit of a rigorous protocol. This protocol requires that each subject be photographed alive, in its natural environment (in situ), however as if it was in a studio. The black background is captured at the shoot, the RAW files requiring only the traditional processing of development to restore the subject as close as possible to the real. It is the story of my outdoor studio, which allows me to settle anywhere in the world, during a bivouac, and to respect my strict protocol that translates this continuity to my photos, this deep black, where only the subject creates the rupture. The exposure : The usual glass and framing are excluded, printing on rigid panel produces direct proximity and physical contact with the photo. (UV printing on Dibond). By proposing to discover singular images - that take the subject out of the known context to present it differently, to challenge - ALIVE links between living. By removing the natural context, VIVANT wishes to erase the “knowing”, and allow an intimate face-to-face, without interface, without intermediary – only curiosity and emotion are required. Encouraging an appreciation of the subject as an individual rather than as a specie, this lack of context contrasts with traditional naturalistic images. The shapes, colors and textures that compose each image, enforce a new rhythm, causing a new eye.