Just because someone takes a photo on film negative does not make him a great Photographer. However, if someone takes pictures like Joël Alain Dervaux with his analogue camera, there is no doubt that Joël has a wealth of knowledge and uses it to create his images. Sometimes he gets lost in the detail, sometimes he gets metres away from the subject, but the end result is always an unadulterated ‘Dervaux photograph’, full of emotion, rhythm and impression.
I had the pleasure of interviewing him before –which you can read here-, and his work has also appeared in the 4th PNPPL magazine, and now I am pleased to present his book, Improvisations. I have already booked my copy, you can do the same at the link in the article!
The art book Improvisations gathers a collection of 80 photographs drawing from a large corpus put together over a decade.
Within a delimited and permanent space, men and women come to get undressed and bare it all to leave a body mark, take the risk of revealing interiority and expose the mark of desire to my glance. The specified moment, the identical place and natural light create the conditions for a space where their presence reveals itself. I record these on film like signifiers, recognised signs, Improvisations.
Conceived together with graphic designer Odilon Coutarel, this book allows to consider appearances, disappearances, asserted and withheld presences as a response to the corpus to create a renewed reading of my photographic practice.
Responding to what is at stake in my work, some images are covered with a white veil, keeping them draped in white light, contrasting with others which impose themselves filter-free. The papers used provide various degrees of transparency and translucency and superimpositions turning into the basis of a sensual transmission of those glances cast on naked bodies, of postures and gestures, hints I spot as traces of desire.
The text acts as a thread or a poem by Valérie Fougeirol, interfering as a flow, running and repeating itself, where words arise and light up, having turned into signifiers too.
Photographs by Joël Alain Dervaux @joel_alain_dervaux / joelalaindervaux.com
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