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Patrick
Regnouf
Artist
Statement: What makes the difference between the Venus de Milo and the
picture you took of your wife in the bathroom while she was drying up half
naked. Both these pieces represent women with their breasts exposed. So
what makes one a piece of the finest art ever created and the other one
barely good enough to hide in your private photo album? The answer might
come easy: an artist, but I keep on asking my question, what is the
difference between both pictures? Is it light? Is it the subject? Is it
the angle, the background? In fact it is all of that and many more things:
the resulting work, the addition of all the right ingredients which make a
photograph or a painted work a true form of art is more than the sum of
its parts. Because a work of art, just as the bathroom picture, will talk
to you, will awaken different emotions in you. The difference is that the
bathroom picture will awaken sexual desire whereas Venus will tell
you a different story, something else: the feeling that you are in
presence of sheer beauty, not just because of the subject or the light or
whatever does compose that work, but because of the time, will, pain
determination and skills that the artist did put in it. You, with the
bathroom picture, you have somehow performed a certain form of art, but it
is so crude, so close to reality, so unprepared that what you will get on
the picture is just whatever reality was there, present before the camera
when you took that picture. There lies the difference between your shot
and the Venus, Venus does not exist, whatever the artist did capture was
made up, bogus, unreal. The artist must be the sculptor of an alternate
reality before he exposes that reality to the world.
There is a reason why professional photographers, cinematographers and
more generally any artist involved in the process do take time to prepare
a shoot, to perform the shoot and to work on the resulting photographs.
The point is to take the viewer by the hand and bring it into our world,
outside reality, outside time, outside moral considerations. It is not
every day that you see a stunning beauty, nude, in whatever situation the
work of art will picture. It is nobody’s reality, not even the
photographer’s (even if sometimes he wishes it was). We do spend a lot
of energy shooting these pictures, a lot of time to find the one we had in
mind before the shoot even took place and even more time to re-work that
basic picture to make it what you will see in the museum or your weekly
magazine … The sheer beauty of some of the models is only the beginning,
the girl you saw on the street and who did light the fire in you might or
might not become a good subject for art, there is so much more to being a
good model than just being beautiful, this is just a start. It is all
about hard work, dedication, time and skills.
I
truly believe that everyone can be an artist, because everyone, one day
wished reality away and wanted more than anything to enter another one
where all concerns disappear, where you do away with the pain and the
atrocious grey which makes a daily routine seem so desperately dull. But
being an artist is not about taking pictures, it is about creating reality
as you wish it and then shoot it to death …. When I create another
reality, I do create it from scratch, from a universe in my mind where
there is nothing, no light, no model, no accessories, nothing. Then a
picture is born, one that I will endeavour to copy from inside me to the
outside and this is a long and painful process. Because I have to create
that reality out of our reality, re-create the light, the mood the
model’s expression … what the model will bring to my shoot is the
final and most important ingredient of all: EMOTION. Most important
because that is this emotion that the picture will convey. The model will
be your guide into this other side to reality, she is the only human being
out there, the only one who will be able to take you by the hand and let
you in so that you can start this dialogue of emotions with her.
If
the work of art is a success then this dialogue will take place
between you and your imagination. This is what I feel my work is all
about.
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