honorable mention
Charles-Henry Bedue france
title
LA Lockdown
poets and mystics, the worlds of those affected by challenges of the
psyche. In 2017, I collaborated with Opéra de Paris for 3 months, capturing
the life of the artists at work behind the curtain at Palais Garnier and
Opéra Bastille. The thrill of this experience pushed me to pursue this
exploration of the world of entertainment, while choosing an opposite
aesthetic to the one of Opéra de Paris. Also, the work environment had to
be large enough for the project to be an adventure. So in 2019, I decided
to spend 5 weeks in Las Vegas the following fall, then to go to Los Angeles
in order to settle there.*
*At its origine, this work was about the relation between creative process
in performing art and the kind of madness that it takes. *
*I worked with delight with artists of all kinds: chippendales, pool
dancers, magicians and burlesque circus shows… It was around halloween
time. Then I went in Los Angeles where the shootings replaced the shows in
my reportage. I was falling in love with the city until Covid-19 happened,
followed by the protests. At this point where our overheated society
stopped, the shows and shooting was over everywhere, so i went out on the
streets, irresistibly attracted by those who, like the artist, embody in
their own way a violent force of resistance to the tragedy of life. Some of
them where homeless, hobos, fishermen near the sea, wanderers, protesters…
My love continued to grow while everything seemed to fall apart around me.
This disproportionate feeling at a time so unusual inspired the title
L’Amour Monstre.
The 5 triptychs emphasize the part of the series in LA during covid
lockdown followed by the protests.
Diplomate of a master degree in 2003 from the visual art school Academy Julian ESAG Penninghen in Paris, I moved to China in Shanghai then Beijing, from 2007 to 2014.
There, I worked as photographer, as much for advertising companies as as a reporter or fashion photographer, for magazines
as Vogues, Numéro or I Look.
In 2011, I decided to focus more on the field of reportage photography to extract from a diligent and pure observation of my daily life, symbolic images located on the border of figurative and abstract.
Introspection, reading, travel; the appearances, what it says, it hides; the question of border, of norm, of golden mean, orientate my life and my art since the beginning.
After my come back in Paris in 2014, I had continue to collaborate with newspaper or magazine (Liberation, Le Monde, Marie-Claire, Causette...) until a major collaboration with Opéra de Paris in 2017.
In my artistic process, collecting images, meditating on them, is not an end in itself. It is a way to unite with oneself, then to unite with others by transmitting them.
This relationship between an image, an acquirer and myself has become a creative process called Virtuous Circle, and an eponym exhibition from November 2016/January 2017, at The Finnish Museum of Photography in Helsinki.
In September, I moved to Las Vegas and Los Angeles where I am based now, and started the new series L’Amour Monstre about the society of spectacle.
back to gallery
entry description
In my work, I am deeply impassioned by observing children and artists,poets and mystics, the worlds of those affected by challenges of the
psyche. In 2017, I collaborated with Opéra de Paris for 3 months, capturing
the life of the artists at work behind the curtain at Palais Garnier and
Opéra Bastille. The thrill of this experience pushed me to pursue this
exploration of the world of entertainment, while choosing an opposite
aesthetic to the one of Opéra de Paris. Also, the work environment had to
be large enough for the project to be an adventure. So in 2019, I decided
to spend 5 weeks in Las Vegas the following fall, then to go to Los Angeles
in order to settle there.*
*At its origine, this work was about the relation between creative process
in performing art and the kind of madness that it takes. *
*I worked with delight with artists of all kinds: chippendales, pool
dancers, magicians and burlesque circus shows… It was around halloween
time. Then I went in Los Angeles where the shootings replaced the shows in
my reportage. I was falling in love with the city until Covid-19 happened,
followed by the protests. At this point where our overheated society
stopped, the shows and shooting was over everywhere, so i went out on the
streets, irresistibly attracted by those who, like the artist, embody in
their own way a violent force of resistance to the tragedy of life. Some of
them where homeless, hobos, fishermen near the sea, wanderers, protesters…
My love continued to grow while everything seemed to fall apart around me.
This disproportionate feeling at a time so unusual inspired the title
L’Amour Monstre.
The 5 triptychs emphasize the part of the series in LA during covid
lockdown followed by the protests.
about the photographer
I was born in Toulouse in 1980.Diplomate of a master degree in 2003 from the visual art school Academy Julian ESAG Penninghen in Paris, I moved to China in Shanghai then Beijing, from 2007 to 2014.
There, I worked as photographer, as much for advertising companies as as a reporter or fashion photographer, for magazines
as Vogues, Numéro or I Look.
In 2011, I decided to focus more on the field of reportage photography to extract from a diligent and pure observation of my daily life, symbolic images located on the border of figurative and abstract.
Introspection, reading, travel; the appearances, what it says, it hides; the question of border, of norm, of golden mean, orientate my life and my art since the beginning.
After my come back in Paris in 2014, I had continue to collaborate with newspaper or magazine (Liberation, Le Monde, Marie-Claire, Causette...) until a major collaboration with Opéra de Paris in 2017.
In my artistic process, collecting images, meditating on them, is not an end in itself. It is a way to unite with oneself, then to unite with others by transmitting them.
This relationship between an image, an acquirer and myself has become a creative process called Virtuous Circle, and an eponym exhibition from November 2016/January 2017, at The Finnish Museum of Photography in Helsinki.
In September, I moved to Las Vegas and Los Angeles where I am based now, and started the new series L’Amour Monstre about the society of spectacle.
back to gallery