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Alexandre Photographies
Random Thoughts
I was born in Paris, in the 15th district a few decades ago, my childhood wandered between two universes separated by such a vast ocean that the ferry routes were already a long journey of the mind.
The meaning of my photographic journey, I owe it to a woman Paulette Gassman, daughter-in-law of the founder of Pictorial Service Pierre Gassman, laboratory assistant of the Magnum agency in its infancy. She followed up my interview and made me enter the temple of photojournalism, I rubbed shoulders with Henry Cartier Bresson, his wife Martine Franck, Robert Doisneau, the works of Salgado and many other masters of the photographic art. From this experience, I retained the simplicity, the elegance of the essential. Like Bernard Plossu, whose poetry in images and the big names named above I appreciate, I shoot only at the standard focal length, a lens with human vision, without artifice, which gives all its strength to the content, a simple, refined and free style. ....
Travel is a constant curiosity for me to know everything that I miss, to always learn from elsewhere. To be oneself the curiosity of others is a way of relearning oneself, of finding oneself with what one has most beautiful to share. This thirst for meeting, to feel what still escapes us, to be in osmosis with our awakened senses, it is for me to live with the greatest intensity. I love islands of all kinds, in all hemispheres, my children are islanders, there is great freedom to live. The sea all around is just an infinite opening to the world, a hymn to reverie, we feel good there and I like the melancholy that we can experience there.
Photography for me, like writing, is a way of detaching yourself from reality in order to seek this happy light which takes us towards emotion, poetry. This space freed from material constraints allows me to get closer to the essential values that have always guided my life, the freedom to be oneself, benevolence and Love, always ....
Alexandre PENOT
The meaning of my photographic journey, I owe it to a woman Paulette Gassman, daughter-in-law of the founder of Pictorial Service Pierre Gassman, laboratory assistant of the Magnum agency in its infancy. She followed up my interview and made me enter the temple of photojournalism, I rubbed shoulders with Henry Cartier Bresson, his wife Martine Franck, Robert Doisneau, the works of Salgado and many other masters of the photographic art. From this experience, I retained the simplicity, the elegance of the essential. Like Bernard Plossu, whose poetry in images and the big names named above I appreciate, I shoot only at the standard focal length, a lens with human vision, without artifice, which gives all its strength to the content, a simple, refined and free style. ....
Travel is a constant curiosity for me to know everything that I miss, to always learn from elsewhere. To be oneself the curiosity of others is a way of relearning oneself, of finding oneself with what one has most beautiful to share. This thirst for meeting, to feel what still escapes us, to be in osmosis with our awakened senses, it is for me to live with the greatest intensity. I love islands of all kinds, in all hemispheres, my children are islanders, there is great freedom to live. The sea all around is just an infinite opening to the world, a hymn to reverie, we feel good there and I like the melancholy that we can experience there.
Photography for me, like writing, is a way of detaching yourself from reality in order to seek this happy light which takes us towards emotion, poetry. This space freed from material constraints allows me to get closer to the essential values that have always guided my life, the freedom to be oneself, benevolence and Love, always ....
Alexandre PENOT
