François-Marie Banier

The life of photography Who is a photographer? Any high-wire artist without a wire, any conductor without an orchestra, any realistic dreamer with a bit of persistence who, whether confusedly or not, has the feeling, the courage – it only takes a slight movement of the index finger – to stop the world. He blocks it, wedges it, lays it out. For good. Makes it solid. That is where the work of art begins: when it’s over. When the photo has been taken, printed, chosen. Sold, I might say. […] Excerpt from the text The life of photography by François-Marie Banier   People Suddenly, in the street, a form rises up before me, a face appears that I have never seen before and that speaks to me. The way their foot strikes out to move forward sets a whole narrative in motion (the novel each one of us drafts every day). […] Excerpt from the text People by François-Marie Banier   Written and painted photos I started by writing on my photographs, encouraged by certain masses of white and black that I found inside other forms and that suddenly had something to say. With my pen and then my brush I entered into the photographs, which have their own life, and I continued. […] Excerpt from the text Written and painted photos by François-Marie Banier   Against the wall Sometimes I wrap gauze dipped in chamomile around my eyes to soothe them during a heat wave. Beneath my eyelids I see a stream of initials, faces, countries, verses by absent poets, and mountain profiles. Beneath the gauze life goes on, like the pain of an amputated foot that continues to throb. I browse the stations of François-Marie Banier’s journey and rediscover the same landscape of visions, although his are unbound and set on film. […] Excerpt from the text Against the wall by Erri de Luca