To observe the landscape implicates a temporality different than it is that imposed by the city. As we live in a constant acceleration of evenements and an intense reproductibility of objects we daily use, the feeling that the time is over passing us, provoque a loss of our spatiotemporal landmarks. With the current communications media, we can echange in the immediatety, even with far away geografical distance persons.   Concived by the reunion of photographs taken in our familiar areas of life, the serie offers an incarnation of fictitious landscapes. The peculiar light presents in these pictures exists only, thanks to the the assemblage of two photographs of natural places, that nothing could predict the meeting. The evanescent landscapes created, make up new territories manipulated by men, at the time protective, imaginary and timeless.   Realised in collaboration with Audrey Guiraud..

Under the cartographic angle consideration, La Chaux-de-Fonds can give the impression to be a rigorous and austere city, because it is constructed in repetitive and ordered modules. Actually, reality is different. Built as a long mineral casting which goes up on the sides of two hills which face, the metropolis enjoys a relief in constant evolution. The presence of gardens which open out in alternation with the lines of dwellings and the roadway, offers to the city green zones in terraces, in continuity with the surrounding countryside. Another specificity of La Chaux-de-Fonds is the presence of a regional vegetation, in the middle of the metropolis. Thus, fir trees, ashes, charms, maples, beeches, hawthorn, honeysuckle, elder trees go alongside graminaceous and indigenous apiaceaes without apprehending neither effects of fashion, nor globalization.   Series realised for L’expérience de la ville cultural projet.

The title is a contraction of the words “urban” and “organic”. Built according to a play and a questioning on the concept of perception, the images produce enactments of dialogues or breaks between two different and opposite spaces. In the foreground, a dense vegetation forms a framework in the frame. In a variable way, this alive space appears either as a set rich in details and information, or as a dark and uniform plan. The spectator can for example consider this vegetable zone like a window, a curtain which opens on urban space and to enter it gradually by plans, layers, stages. Or on the contrary, this part of the image can be apprehended like a screen which masks or makes disappear the city in the background, and to create the illusion which the organic matter invades and takes again control on the spaces invested by the human being.

Conceived according to a checkerboard plan, strict and ordered, New York City however presents constructed spaces according to an organic logic. Like if by places, the city changed into canopy, and that new buildings were built beyond, over what already exists. On top of the bases, foundations of the city. Over buildings which represent the memory and the alive archives of the metropolis, in a game of dialogues and tensions, which seem controlled.

“I am not fooled by the illusion of stillness that protects this world. The landscapes told me of the subjects’ plots, reflections and inner lives. I’m aware of the conversations and creations of both of them. I want to pound on this window of illusion, and demand that someone let me enter. But I am afraid. I enjoy the peacefulness and beauty of these images. I do not want to discover a world of violence, destruction and anger. A world that may or may not exist. So I protect myself by closing my eyes and imagining what these subjects are thinking and feeling. I want their thoughts to be pure, sensual and innocent. And because this is what I want, this is what I see.” Jacques Couvillon

The series presents deserted urban spaces, where reign a theatrical, enigmatic atmosphere to see worrying. The title refers to the term used in movie scenario, which makes it possible to define a place and time in which a specific action proceeds. Places which either are put in scene and arranged for the needs of the movie, or entirly recreated in studio, generally in the search for an illusion of reality. With the series Nighttime exteriors, the step is reversed: the photographs are carried out on spot which look like stage sets or built spaces. The images have a latent narrative character and are charged with a certain dramatic tension. It seems that an action has just occurred, or will take place in a short time. Thus, the spectator has the possibility to create, invent, build his own story, starting from its felt, its history or its imagination.