It's Called Work

What can I say about the pictures of which I have been a privileged spectator and viewer? What can I add that I have not already said during those heated exchanges in the work sessions? I remember; sometimes I took it gently but sometimes - quite often, maybe - I didn't. The reason for any quick tempered reaction was simple; as I watched, the students' work was progressing. Each one in his or her own way. My discourse was made only of disjointed parts which I hoped "my" students would engage with at some time; in what we call seminary.

Of course, we weren't taken in by such a situation. Quite the opposite, in fact. But I sincerely think that it satisfied all of us. Every one knew the outcome; once I had turned my back on them, the students would be able to live freely with their own pictures and I would become anonymous again.

Or perhaps not completely anonymous. Here I can intervene on their behalf in another way. Once upon a time.

Once upon every time, therefore, those stories accompanied these pictures like an account of their work in which hesitation was mixed with affirmation, doubt with will power: "I am lost but there is all that to be seen." "I cannot achieve it but I do know it will be that way, more or less." "I do not know why I fragment bodies that way but it cannot be any other way. I need to do it. I have to do it, just to see."

Thus over a year, each one went on his/her own way. At each session I would say at the conclusion: "Go on." Because the moment would be coming when the photographer would be managing the consequences of his/her own act, of his/her own doing. The very first question - "what to do?" - would be vanishing and a more decisive question replacing it, the one that would link the "what" and the "how".

"The preoccupation with what results in a preoccupation with how" Meyerhold claimed. In other words, the idea, the thought or the contents can only be powerful in an artistic work when technology respects its limit. Freedom, if it does exist for the artist, can be found at this level. It is called work and that's what's on show here.

Christian Milvanoff - Lecturer, École Nationale de la Photographie November 1996