PORTRAIT
Olivier Valsecchi is a French photographer born in 1979 in Paris, who now works and lives in Toulouse. Olivier first became interested in musical creation before turning to photography and self-portraiture. For several years he has focused on the human body and combines photography with statuary. Through his images emerges an energy revealed by light. He made a name for himself in 2010 with his DUST series (rewarded two years later by the Hasselblad Masters Awards). This series, clearly inspired by chaos theory, presents a chiaroscuro straight from the Renaissance.
The twisting bodies are crowned with a cloud of dust, which gives them this surreal aspect, a sort of nebula, synonymous with birth and death. In Klecksography, his next series, he pursues this idea of sculpture on the human body, inspired by the method of the Swiss Hermann Rorschach, who used the ink stains created on the paper in order to detect possible dementia or schizophrenia. . Olivier then decides to give full latitude to what he calls the "inner enemy", this part of darkness present in each of us. In 2012, in his third series, TIME OF WAR, the French photographer kept the visual of DUST, but left the world of chaos for that of transmigration. Olivier Valsecchi's work arouses ever-increasing interest in the world of photography, both in the press and among curators.
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
What is the Valsecchi style?
I like when a photo doesn't strictly look like a photo, comes out of reality, out of codes. I love Ken Hermann and Jim Naughten who work on Fine Art reporting. I heard about my work in these terms: "It's very difficult to describe, you have to see it." I like it because I haven't forgotten that photography is a visual art, so it must speak to the eyes before speaking to the ears. I would gladly say that I combine opposites: beautiful and bizarre, classic and abstract, simple and spectacular. I do photography that extends to drawing, sculpture, painting, performance. I try to embrace multiple art forms through a single image. The style evolves in a career, according to the desires, and the changes that take place in you. Otherwise we always do the same thing, right?
Your artistic influences (cinema, literature, art...)?
My influences are not immediately felt in my work. It's more about familiarity with bewitching and free characters such as David Lynch, Nina Hagen, Kafka, artists who have created their own universes and their own path. In terms of photography, I would cite Jeff Bark. A real work of light, precise, punctilious. In my opinion, it revalues the definition of photography, which is to write with light.
What inspires you in these bodies?
I don't think like that. The body is a material to be illuminated, which will help me compose a photo. Of course it interests me a little more than plastic or clay, because we play in an intimate zone, and that's the only thing that the model and I have in common from the start: our body. So I can transpose myself into him, I can identify myself. But it's not the body I'm looking for, nor even its emotion, that's the role of nude photography. I seek the emotion of the image. It's a whole different job. The body must fit into my image. He is the object and not the subject of the image. What interests me is to confront reality and surrealism. Consider that I created through my photos a parallel universe, from elements of reality. The muscles, the nerves, the flesh, are so many ingredients which bring back a reality where I sow the fantastic.
- Find the continuation of Oliver Valsecchi inNormal Magazine n°4 et n°7 -
