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.
