THE MOVING IMAGE OR PHOTOGRAPHY AND AIKIDŌ

Hong Kong by night, February 2005 © Éric Petr

My path, in my reflection on the moving image

I was a passionate film photographer from 1983 to 1993. I developed my films and printed my photographs in a photo lab I borrowed from the Paris Airport.
Then I suddenly stopped photography. At that precise moment in its history, I undoubtedly felt that an earthquake had occurred, and that I no longer had a place in it. The digital world was emerging.

And so went the years without taking a single photograph and without touching a camera in the decade that followed.
When I look at my photo albums, I see a gaping hole of a decade’s worth of unprinted memories, some of which have disappeared into the depths of my subconscious.
The first lesson I learned from this deprivation of images is that photography, drawing and travel journals, beyond their beauty, are first and foremost an indispensable and necessary tool for memory.

But I had to step back from my obsessive and sickly relationship with the camera, and the ten years I’d been away from it made me aware of this, and gave me the distance I needed to reflect freely and without constraint on the power of the image, its role, its power, and above all, the way in which the photographic image could touch on the immaterial, the metaphysical, and express unspeakable emotions of the spiritual or invisible order.

And so it was that this decade of gestation, which was accompanied by an intense practice of uncompromising Aikidō, changed my view of the world, or rather, brought to it an acuity that until then had met with some difficulty in expressing itself clearly within me.

It’s also undeniable that Aikidō, in its pure practice, traditional approach, intensive training and regular meditation, provides access to a wider field of spiritual knowledge and our relationship with the universe.
This is how Aikidō has helped me so much and continues to bring me this depth in the conception of my photography.

I would like to express my gratitude to Armand Mamy-Rahaga and Michel Kovaleff who, through their practice of a fair and uncompromising martial art, have helped me to find a path in my reflection, and to resume my photographic work with the strength that Aiki gives us.

Koh Chang 2002 © Éric Petr
Twelfth exposure of a first-ever photo film made after a ten-year hiatus from photography.

So in December 2002, after a ten-year hiatus, I took up photography again, where I had left off in 1993, but with a more structured coherence than my work of the 80s had produced.

It was a chance encounter with a 12-exposure disposable Pocket Instamatic Kodak, initiated by a trip from Thailand to Cambodia. 
Twelve great moments of emotion!
Just twelve photos taken during a trip to the ends of the earth is like holding your breath until the end.
On this trip, I learned to take my time, to search my subconscious for the triggering breath of the photographic click, the pleasure of the release.
I realized that photography is, above all, about listening to our universe.

The first photographic works I produced from 2003 onwards (Tōkyō under the rain_2oo3, Bangkok_2oo4, TrAveRséE2nUiT_2oo4, Windows_2oo5, and others), constitute the foundations and underpinnings of a knowledge acquired during this decade of interruption in photographic practice.

The three images I’m presenting today from 2005 are highly representative of my style. My photography not only uses light as the primary constituent of the work, but is also distinguished by its ability to capture the subtlest details of a scene or place, transforming visible objects and magnifying their secret perception. Through this gaze, each image becomes a kind of visual poem, where the invisible takes shape, and the viewer is invited to discover a world all his or her own, while remaining connected to the universal human experience.

These images from my Hong Kong by night series, taken in February 2005, attempt to reproduce the ineffable atmosphere of Asian cities, bringing with them what will become my signature as a photographer, that aspect of dense, poetic luminous matter, that dreamlike atmosphere and that feeling of timelessness.
Although these images were taken twenty years ago, their power makes us forget the poor quality of the digital camera used at the time, which remains a feat.

Hong Kong by night, February 2005 © Éric Petr

My photographic work will continue uninterrupted within the framework of this reflection on light, movement, space and time.
I have named this photographic process to define it: “in situ kinetic photography” or “photographie cinétique in situ”.

This work continues today with my Variations de Lumière but also, and always, with 光 (Hikari), Métamorphoses or my Spirituelles Odyssées which gave rise to the publication of a numbered and signed book in 2016, by Corridor Éléphant, Éditeur de photographies contemporaines.

This work on light and movement, which I began to disseminate on social networks in 2010, remained largely unknown to photographers and the general public. My numerous publications gave way, little by little, to a photographic trend that other photographers, in turn, took up and developed on their own, then named in the years 2015 “Intentional Camera Movement”.

I’m happy to be one of the very first investigators of this photographic movement, and to name but a few who preceded me, Kōtarō Tanaka (1905-1995), Ernst Haas (1921-1986), and also my contemporary Alexey Titarenko (b. 1962), who for his part worked specifically on crowds in motion.

I personally see myself as a photographer who has concentrated all my work and efforts over the course of my life on this principal reflection of the moving image, creating a totally unique style.

Hong Kong by night, February 2005 © Éric Petr

FROM “ICM” TO “IN SITU KINETIC PHOTOGRAPHY”

Bangkok 2oo4 © Éric Petr [Intentional Camera Movement]

“in situ kinetic photography”
first principle of a manifesto

I started practicing photography in 1983, and for ten years I had this idea of developing a research and aesthetic based on light, and the impact that light can have on our mind, our thoughts, and our perception of the universe.

I resumed this work in 2003, after taking a break from photography between 1993 and 2003.
Nevertheless, my reflection on the image nourished this period of inactivity, which subsequently proved very rich and constructive for my photographic work.

Ten years later, in 2003, after thinking long and hard about the image, its role and its power, I continued my photographic work on light, as plastic or matter, with a fresh eye.

“Bangkok 2oo4” and other works from the same period show a body of work that drew inspiration from this time of reflection, introspection and maturation.

In this new era of digital imaging, this style of photography was not yet precisely named, but a decade later it was, under the name ICM (Intentional Camera Movement).

光 0x1853AC © Éric Petr, 2020 [in situ kinetic photography]

In the 20th century, some photographers devoted part of their work to this technical aspect of motion photography, such as, to name but a few, Kōtarō Tanaka (1905-1995), Ernst Haas (1921-1986), and Alexey Titarenko (b. 1962), who worked specifically on moving crowds.

In the early 2000s, my work on the moving image, with the idea of painting with light on my film or sensor, is very contemporary in approach, and remains on the bangs.

My work, which is based on the principle of intentional movement, has now evolved to bring a broader field to the ICM, which I call “in situ kinetic photography”.
“In situ kinetic photography” brings a wider field to the “intentional camera movement” and takes into account different axes and planes, in situ, for the same exposure that oscillates from a few seconds to a few minutes.

“In situ kinetic photography” is similar to the ultrasound of a place that is produced like a micro-film, but which is recorded on a single image. It is therefore neither multiple exposures nor post-processing work. Its photography is part of the field of abstraction, or subjective abstraction. Its writing is done with light and photons constitute its alphabet. Its language is cosmic, its style dreamlike and its aesthetic plastic. This photography is similar to painting in the sense that it is constructed on site by composing the elements that are added to the image.

The brush or pencil is the light ray that contains the matter and energy of electromagnetic waves, while the canvas or paper is the film or the camera sensor. Unlike the painter or the calligrapher, it is not the brush that moves, but the support, that is to say the camera.
It is also, in this sense, that the intention of “in situ kinetic photography” is in no way that of “light painting”, even if we can observe certain common points.

For this photograph, composed in situ, elements very dispersed on the site are carefully chosen to compose a photographic painting. After an analysis of the times allowing the addition of the elements to be photographed, the photographer will have to determine precisely the speed of the shutter, the aperture of the focal length, and the sensitivity of the film, according to any filters added.

For “in situ kinetic photography”, the intention is no longer movement, as in “intentional camera movement”, but that of constructing an abstract image with a plastic density that will suggest the superposition of quantum states of a geographical point that light crosses during its infinite odyssey.

Éric Petr | 0xB09FE203
The fight of the Amazons | Metamorphoses 0xB09FE203 © Éric Petr, 2019 [in situ kinetic photography]
Éric Petr | 0x480DF803
光 0x480DF803 © Éric Petr, 2014 [in situ kinetic photography]
Éric Petr | 0x7077 Variations of Light opus 0 (Nikon F3) Le Lavandou 1980's
Variations of Light opus 0, Le Lavandou 1980’s © Éric Petr | Nikon F3, film Kodak
Variations of Light opus 5 [Triptyk 2021] 65x300cm © Éric Petr [in situ kinetic photography]

ARGENTIC PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE 21st CENTURY

Église Saint Trophime, Arles – Éric Petr, 2024 | Nikon F3T, Nikkor H85 f1.8 & Ilford Delta 100

In the 90s, I stopped photography after ten years of passion.

In those years, digital photography arrived and supplanted film photography in just a few years.
A tidal wave that shook an entire industry. All photographers will have something to say about this era, often recounting a painful moment.

For my part, a great sadness seized me. I buried my equipment and my work as if to forget forever this passion for which I had devoted so much time and for which everything seemed to disappear forever.

Ten years later, I slowly returned to the image scene like an addict returning to his drug. 

It was with the Nikon Df, in 2013, that I rediscovered the lost pleasures of film photography.
This camera seemed to me to be the closest thing to silver-based practice, not in the process, but rather in the way it felt to take the shot. Nikon Df is the kind of substitute that photograhpy addicts can take to fool their bodies and minds. But of course, the feeling is deceptive and, despite everything, unsatisfactory.

It had to come to this, to close the loop and, to bring out the old gear from the 80s, recapture the divine sensations of silver halide and continue the journey with our first loves. 

Today, I no longer take pleasure in digital technology, and it is essential for me to continue my quest where my raft ran aground.

⚪️ Click on the images to see them in silver grain detail ⚪️

On the way to Arles – Éric Petr, 2024 | Nikon F3T, Nikkor NC24 f2.8 & Ilford Delta 100

It is probably difficult for many people to understand this relationship with film photography. But film photography is an extraordinary tool!

Once you’ve got the hang of it, you will feel like you have gone from a modern car to a vintage one, without any further assistance. 

You shoot and do not have to worry about checking whether your photo was actually taken. Your gesture and technique with film must be beyond reproach, otherwise all your images will be lost forever.
Silver halide is a technique with no net and no room for error.
Concentration is total and the choice to shoot takes on its full value and meaning.
Your choice of film will depend on the type of work you want to achieve, and the same goes for developing the film, with the different developers and exposure times that will bring a particular style to your image.

And then there is the grain of film! This magnificent grain is not the result of the digital recording of electromagnetic waves through a low-pass filter, but of the photochemical process of exposing light to an emulsion of silver halide crystals. 

The plastic result is so different! 

Approach, enter, zoom into a silver image and see these clouds of crystals in infinite colors or shades of gray, like the dots in an etching or the particles that make up stellar clusters. 

Feel the beauty of the silver image!

Self-portrait – Éric Petr, 2024 | Nikon F3T, Nikkor NC24 f2.8 & Ilford Delta 100

Over the last few years, I have been amazed and delighted to see that silver-based photography is gradually making a comeback, not as a mass-market application, but as an alternative creative practice.

Generally taken up by young people curious about the medium, traditional photography has risen from the ashes to occupy the artistic field, and many associated activities have developed in parallel, such as laboratories for developing film and prints on photosensitive paper, training courses in silver photography, small publishing houses dedicated to the authors of this old photography with a fresh eye, as well as numerous stores selling second-hand equipment and silver film of all types.

So, in the 21st century, silver or digital photography?

Beyond this choice, photography is a commitment, a way of seeing, feeling and describing the world around us.