In photo’s one particular moment in time and a specific place merge into a unique image. The photographer freezes daily life and, sometimes, even history. It is this stillness in photography that offers inspiration. The photo preserves. Find here some of my photographs.
It may be no more than a simple implement, but it still is in a museum, this chair of an attendant who doesn’t attend. Could it not be a work of art? Could it not be the collector’s pride, a connoisseur’s delight? Its presence, on a hot afternoon in Vézénobres, is formidable. Call its colour Yves Klein blue, and a masterpiece of intensity is born.
Though the image suggests speed, nautical downfall is slow. Somewhere in Brittany this bitter truth presented itself along the coastline. There is no way back to the sea, no more chance of bringing in loads of fish. They seem to know and, a pair for the rest of their days, gently bend over and support each other. They embrace in a last dance of decay.
Under a plane-tree in Orange. This morning was sunny and windy; it took the camera to arrest the rustling leafs. Across the street the Roman Theatre was still in its place after nearly two-thousand years. At this hour the wind was working hard to slim down the Theatre’s massive stones. It’s all a matter of time.
Nature’s red in Roussillon, a French village famous for its deep red rocks and soil. This is where Samuel Beckett took refuge during the Second World War, picking grapes nearby. His eyes may have met with this old wall, though he lived in the lower part of the village. Behind the house where he and his wife Suzanne Deschevaux had their rooms, you may find some typical rocks, eroded into statues. The red is the same.
Lightning struck and a tree turned into a statue. It points, in melodrama, at the skies that once produced the fires of destruction. The peace of Blaison-Gohier has not been disturbed.
He could be a Nobody’s Boy, left alone in this world, sans famille. However, it’s the picture that isolates him. In fact, there were many people around, here in Brissac-Quincé. A film was being shot about the Liberation of France in 1944. That explains his old and dull clothes. What counts, in his world, is the importance of stones for kindling imagination.
This Burgundy farm near Demigny is an almost perfect building. It has surrounded itself with a special atmosphere that would have caught Hitchcock’s eye. This is a story of grass and death and memory (and a silent threat that is about to reveal itself).
A still life in Constance. This bike, though bearing its losses with dignity, radiates sorrow. No more trips around the splendid lake nearby. How senseless life has become for the bell and the lock, left behind without mercy.
The ups and downs of this old door are sawn into it, like a graph. Remember this beautiful pattern, in case you will be asked to design a door. You may find it in Roussillon. I know by now the French love to split their doors, restoring only the parts that time’s chisel has utterly crumbled.
Cor Hermans 