« Janus et Rébus sont sur la banquise» a creative turning point.

As I already said since September I am in a creative period. My colleagues from the A.A.B. who organized an exhibition about the COP 21 objectives were lacking material to show. I decided to think about what I could do to support their initiative. I began by conceiving a photo with the material of « La Géode en Folie» and produced an enigmatic composition that illustrated the title « Janus and Rébus are on the bank-ice ». Very pleased with my inventive composition I sent it by email expecting an enthusiastic response. « I don't understand. » was the answer. So, I was obliged to provide an explanation. I found that very comical and instructive. I changed slightly the composition, add an explanation and decided to present the result, called Mea Culpa, in the exhibition.

But I needed to present something. The idea to use the collection of the COP 21 posters (see my previous post) came up. As I had no intention to glue my posters in the streets of Paris like street artists do with their work (they do that at night away from the police), I imagine to use Photoshop to include the posters in photos from Parisian streets. The A.A.B. being at the origin of this idea, the first photo presented is the outside wall of the association with some of my posters.

On the other hand, the objective of this exhibition linked with the COP 21 conference was to start thinking ecological in our artistic fields. Therefore, the participants had to provide a detailed label describing the material used in the exhibited works. So, I tried to find an ecological way to present my numerical images. My surprise was complete to state that after several hours on the web searching for a green printing solution, there was in fact no simple solution available at my level in Paris in 2015. There are only few companies offering « Green » printing solutions, and generally available only for companies or industrial quantities, which was not the case for me. For photographers you can choose the more expensive papers made out with plant fibres like cotton or bamboo for instance. Then, you can eventually choose a printing company that will respect a green chart for the treatment of their wastes but there was no photographic laboratory claiming a really green attachment in the list. Of course I looked to the inks and other chemical products used in photography, the results were similar. The conclusion was clear: There is today no possibility to be a 100% green photographer at my scale. One can choose subjects related with this field, but finally the printing of the images or their distribution will demand energy and non-ecological products that will affect environment. So symbolically I decided to present my images with laser prints using recycled paper and not photographic paper. I will show two images sized 30x40cm and a panel of 60x90 cm composed with glued images because there is no other printing possibilities. Of course the quality of the image is deteriorated, but it is the only way I found to be green. So for the future if we want to preserve climate we will have to make compromises with our standards of living and our criteria of

judgement on photography. As long as technology and the industry will not provide a new solution, we will have to change our behaviours. Presently, almost no photographer is ready to follow this way, we are trapped.