On the run with Guillaume Chauvin

May your will be celebration

“When Stimultania offered me a getaway, I dreamed of a real one, with banks locked, flashing lights, high officials strafed and final credits parading through the eyes of a moving crowd. Instead, they suggested a photo workshop apparently far from my concerns, often stuck between separatist trenches and "social cases": this time, direction thelove. I was also coupled with a place far from my usual private colleges and smiling soldiers: Strasbourg Cathedral… All the more reason to accept (h + 0).

The participants were in no hurry. Probably reassured neither by my notoriety nor by its candy-pink advertising surely taken seriously (h + 1)… The courageous (including a courageous one) are called Julia, Thomas, Enzo and César, and sometimes even come from another country . Before leaving to roam the sealed stocks of these holy places (h + 2), these photographers met other works, where love, buildings and spirituality were also touching: Abelardo Morell, Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs, Michael Wesely, Martin Parr, Richard Billingham, Miroslav Tischy, Jim Goldberg, Antoine d'Agata, Anna & Bernhard Blume, Kotori Kawashima, Sally Mann, Christina de Midell, Markus Brunetti or Olivier Roller, himself back from the mountains. (h + 3). Our mission: to avoid the stupid love of Valentine's Day and florists, as well as the cathedral of tourists and blissful people. It is now up to the photographers to appropriate everything (h + 5).

Near the holy water font, the broadcast of a very long “chhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhht” welcomes us, suggesting that crowds take their selfies in silence against the backdrop of the cathedral. However, the director of its conservation reminded us that in medieval times the building was a place of public life, with conversations, prostitution, cattle market, hay, dung and cries of life, far from the current forced silence. Each church then had its god, and even photographers would have had their place. These buildings, like so many stone prayers, were as extreme as they were unprecedented. Crazy egos financed them, although the users are humble or illiterate… This great edifying, astonishing whole, that neither words nor songs can convey, we must try to suggest by the photo. Stations of the cross and pixels. (h + 6)

We go wandering in the restoration workshops of the Notre Dame work, exceptionally empty of its craftsmen and their noise of tools (h + 8). From these scenes will emerge unexpected clichés (h + 10): dazzling still lifes with astonishingly erotic statuary inspired by this setting of stone bodies… The photographers will reveal an impressive banality that is more moving than a well-established opera. Their photos offer neither question nor answer, but sensitive and varied readings, parallel to each other as to mine (h + 12). A single context treated by so many cavalier looks, and snapshots taken from this already frozen reality, where once again the visible asserts itself more mysterious than the invisible (thanks Oscar Wilde). We were blessed, I was delighted (h + 13).

In the end, this run allowed the silences encountered to become stronger (h + 22). Surrounded by tons of pink sandstone, it buckled calmly, without gust or siren, without even visual chatter, but surprisingly rich in improvised visual evidence. You had to see it to believe it (h + 24). I am finishing this text the day another cathedral burned down: in Paris, with all the same crowds moved, flashing lights and senior officials in tears. (h + X). ”

A graduate of the Higher School of Decorative Arts in Strasbourg (now Hear), Guillaume Chauvin works as an author, photographer and editor, questioning the subjectivity of images and affirming his "documented point of view". Established for a time in Russia, he has since published in the national and international press (Le Monde, Feuilleton, 6 Mois, Paris Match, Desports, Zut, Réponses photo). At the same time as this and his public interventions (Freeze frame, France culture, Le Mouv ', Amnesty international, Faculty of Versailles), he developed the work of a writer (Allia editions), and independent editor (Les éditions m' live). His works have been exhibited at the Rencontres d'Arles (Fr), at the Moscow Journalism Faculty (Rus), at the Stimultania (Fr) and Artnews project (Ger) galleries, at Ceaac (Fr), and acquired by the Artothèque from Strasbourg.