honorable mention
Xavier Blondeau france
title
Shadowy Presence
here are places or situations, as the darkness of night gives way to the paleness of the wee hours, when despite its absence, a human presence seems to remain faintly perceptible beyond objects. This ‘shadowy’ presence, like the fragile persistence of a recent life, gives things another dimension. As if they had captured the stamp of human presence. One cannot go without the other. One has become the other.
Shadowy Presence thus focuses on urban surroundings at night. Those universes, though stripped of human presence, yet inexorably loop back to Man. As if the artificial environment he has built, which seems to contradict his human nature, still left its unwavering stamp. One might be tempted to see in these tenuous but tenacious traces, a far more intimate origin?
From a young age, Xavier Blondeau was a follower of photography, or it may be more accurate to say photography followed him. Photography informed the important landmarks of his life: the polaroids of childhood, intimate peeks at his family in countless Kodak moments—roll after roll of film and eventually pixels forming the undergirding that built his life experiences. At 16 he leapt forward and discovered the blue sky of photography, for him the "ultimate light box of the minds eye," allowing him to enter an arena of exploration with vistas long and wide eventually landing him in the digital darkroom.
Blondeau learned to use the capacity of photography to remove our shortcomings that block the expression of the urgent imagination by realizing his vision and ideas into the form of powerful artworks. Despite the remoteness of his many relations with photography in the past, their lyric and personally charged paths continue to cross and intersect.
While travelling through vast desertic places, Xavier Blondeau has been questionning the place of individuals in their environment. Since 2009 and apart from his activity as a teacher and a researcher, Xavier Blondeau has focused his photographic work on the individual. It is presented and structured in photographic series and aims at addressing that question very closely. Since 2011, he has been very active and present in many collective exhibitions and fairs. His work is about intimacy being revealed as his various photographic series unfold.
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entry description
SHADOWY PRESENCEhere are places or situations, as the darkness of night gives way to the paleness of the wee hours, when despite its absence, a human presence seems to remain faintly perceptible beyond objects. This ‘shadowy’ presence, like the fragile persistence of a recent life, gives things another dimension. As if they had captured the stamp of human presence. One cannot go without the other. One has become the other.
Shadowy Presence thus focuses on urban surroundings at night. Those universes, though stripped of human presence, yet inexorably loop back to Man. As if the artificial environment he has built, which seems to contradict his human nature, still left its unwavering stamp. One might be tempted to see in these tenuous but tenacious traces, a far more intimate origin?
about the photographer
BLONDEAU Xavier Author-photographer :From a young age, Xavier Blondeau was a follower of photography, or it may be more accurate to say photography followed him. Photography informed the important landmarks of his life: the polaroids of childhood, intimate peeks at his family in countless Kodak moments—roll after roll of film and eventually pixels forming the undergirding that built his life experiences. At 16 he leapt forward and discovered the blue sky of photography, for him the "ultimate light box of the minds eye," allowing him to enter an arena of exploration with vistas long and wide eventually landing him in the digital darkroom.
Blondeau learned to use the capacity of photography to remove our shortcomings that block the expression of the urgent imagination by realizing his vision and ideas into the form of powerful artworks. Despite the remoteness of his many relations with photography in the past, their lyric and personally charged paths continue to cross and intersect.
While travelling through vast desertic places, Xavier Blondeau has been questionning the place of individuals in their environment. Since 2009 and apart from his activity as a teacher and a researcher, Xavier Blondeau has focused his photographic work on the individual. It is presented and structured in photographic series and aims at addressing that question very closely. Since 2011, he has been very active and present in many collective exhibitions and fairs. His work is about intimacy being revealed as his various photographic series unfold.
back to gallery