You can enlarge the image by zooming[Ctrl] and [+]
Very young, at the age of 7, I started photography. My parents gladly gave me the camera to memorize family scenes. I strayed from time to time to personal compositions with instructions not to abuse because the film and the development were expensive at the time.
But it was at the age of 23 that photography became a passion bordering on neurosis.
I made my debut with 2 Praktica which allowed me to juggle film and lenses.
The passion turned to obsession to the point that I had to deprive myself enormously to buy a Nikon F3 and a Nikon FM and satisfy this thirst.
I remember that the price of a Nikon F3, bare body, corresponded at the time to a little more than a month of a good salary!
At that time, I was in a photo club at the Aéroport de Paris which had great equipment for taking photos.
There was photographic equipment but also two fairly large laboratories; a black and white lab and a color lab with a printing device for Cibachrome.
But the color, you have to be methodical and meticulous, there is the temperature to respect scrupulously, it is a little stressful. I preferred black and white, there is less pressure. And then, that was good, I really preferred the monochrome image to the color one. After work, I would spend my nights in this lab. It was a good time. The time when we have enough energy to do whatever we want.
Sometimes to save time, I developed my films at home. But since it was a very small apartment near the Buttes Chaumont in Paris, I didn’t have a place in the dark. The toilets and the bathroom were far too bright.
So, I developed my films in my wardrobe 😀 You would have seen the mess (laughs) … I could barely fit in there, it must have been barely 1 square meter!
You really had to be crazy about photos and also quite thin 🙂
I wanted to post here a selection of my photographs from the 80s. These are early works where discourse and dramaturgy are missing, but looking at them, I can already see my photography of today taking shape.
Photography is above all an Eye and the earlier we start, the more we exercise our gaze, exactly like a painter or a writer.
